Saw this today — “Carnival Evening” by Henri Rousseau — at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and was knocked flat. The mystery!

UPDATE: I was still thinking about this painting tonight, when it occurred to me why it moved me so much. This scene symbolizes the way I move through life: as a partygoer who finds himself decontextualized (sorry to use that clunky word, but I can’t think of a better one) feeling very much out of place, on the way home, in the deep wintry woods under a full moon, with all the beauty and the danger and the mystery therein. Interesting to think about how art doesn’t explain, but reveals.