I don’t know why this particular painting is so ingrained in my memory. It is almost as if my first memory was of seeing this painting in a museum. So much of my early life was spent in a museum with my mom. I lived inside this desert and the gypsy was related to me and the lion lurked around in the night like the omnipresent darkness and danger of my imagination; its yellow eyes pierced mine in a primordial familiar gaze. I heard the sounds of her mandolin and I could feel the warm desert night air stirring in my fists full of warm sand. I don’t know if it was my imagination on fire or that somehow Henri Rousseau simply painted a perfect snapshot of my past life.
