Things that run through us
Spent a day in Detroit. So much to see in this Motor City. Promised myself that I’d return in the future; maybe the Grand Prix of Detroit on Belle Isle in the spring; or the Heidelberg Project, a neighborhood rising from the ruins of American politics as usual.
The day was spent at the Detroit Institute of Arts. The galleries
transported me back in time. Mediated by the artifacts, in my imagination I breathed the atmosphere of Athens of Pericles, or of Renaissance Florence.
I will comment briefly upon one object. This miniature statue stands no more than four inches high. It is of an Egyptian scribe, gazing in contemplation at a papyrus scroll laying in his lap. The 
statue dates from 1391 to 1353 BC. Note the curls of the wig and the pleated skirt. The Egyptians revered reading and writing as record keeping was the linchpin to administering an empire.
Whether seated before a screen and keyboard, or writing with a lead pencil in a bound journal–you share a common spirit with this departed scribe. It is by contemplation, by words carefully chosen that worlds are created, and empires knit together.
