In Search of Dante Alighieri
In my postulates about fates and destinies, I have come with naive intentions and by chance to the literary void of Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). The heaven he created seems to be unrealistic, and yet the hell he speaks of, I tend to believe, as if I smile now with a sinister air to warn that, "It exists!" I recall once; the neighborhood was alarmed with the smell of sulfur and coconut oil. With my mother telling my older siblings, "Azufre!" Leaving my brother (whose favorite movie is "The Exorcist"), shouting in nightmarish glee: "The vapors of hell!. It turns out someone was only heating a concoction of sulfur powder and coconut oil, believed to be a cure to that dreaded skin disease we know as "kurikong." In some libraries in my teenage years, I followed my seemingly insatiable curiosity about Dante's sulfuric vapors and the realities of his "Inferno." I began to imagine the destinies of people like the hated professors.-...