Late last winter a few friends and I drove to Detroit to visit the Detroit Institute of Art. After a days worth of gazing at art from Franz Marc to ancient Japanese silk screens to Diego Rivera murals, seeing two elderly black men sitting on old sofas on the embankment of an inner city freeway is the image that has stuck with me the most from that day. It was as if I was looking into a tiny window, into a different century and a different reality. These men looked perfectly content, enjoying the late winter sun while watching the traffic and fumes roll by. It struck me as out of place; rarely do people in this country sit outside, observe and watch the world around them. It made me realize that there are still many things about my homeland and its people that I have not yet learned.
I just found this text I wrote for a high school English class on Dante’s La Divina Commedia.
