Exploring New Roads

Writing this blog has been a chance for me to grow. My confidence in my photography and my writing has been increased during the two-and-a-half years that I have been doing this. In fact, writing this blog has given me a chance to expand my horizons, and to try different forms of writing. Traveling can inspire many things. It has gotten me to go beyond just writing travel guides, and to attempt some fiction and poetry. Here is some of what I have produced.

The Lion’s Dream

I was walking through the collection at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and I saw Henrí Rousseau’s painting The Dream. Rousseau (1844-1910) was a self-taught painter during the post-impressionist era. His work is considered Naïve or Primitive.

The Dream is almost surreal, with its positioning of a nude woman reclining on a day bed in a jungle. While Rousseau has written about the dream being the woman’s dream, my attention was captured by the two lions whose faces are in the center of the painting. This short-short is what came from this inspiration:

The Lion’s Dream

By Jonathan Lessuck (inspired by The Dream by Henrí Rousseau)

-Mary?

-Huh?

-Mary?!

-Huh?

-Mary!!??

-What do you want?

-Open your eyes!

-What?

-Open your eyes!

-Why? It’s the middle of the night!

-That’s what I thought, but something is not right.

-What do you mean?

-Open your eyes!

-Shit! Where did all those people come from?

-Good, you see them too.

-What happened?

-That’s what I was going to ask you!

-But where did our home go?

-It’s still behind us. I think that idiot playing a flute woke me up.

-And where did that sofa come from?

-I have no idea. Maybe those people out there brought it.

-But where did those people come from, and why do they stop and stare at us?

-Betty, did we eat those mushrooms again?

-Oh man, I told you it was a bad idea

-Close your eyes and go back to sleep. They will all be gone in the morning.

Together 

One of the highlights of the Robert Lehman Collection at the Metropolitan Museum in New York City is Two Young Girls at the Piano by Auguste Renoir (1841-1919). It was painted in 1892 on commission from the French Government, to be displayed in the new Museé de Luxembourg. This painting is one of four versions that Renior produced. What I saw was the friendship between these two girls. They are presented as being totally comfortable with each other, enjoying an afternoon of song. It inspired this poem: 

Together

By Jonathan Lessuck (inspired by Two Young Girls at the Piano by Auguste Renior (1892)

The day was warm but mother

          Said don’t go out

So we sat at the piano

          Together

The song was new and

          We didn’t know it

But you played and we sang

          Together

Sunbeams bathed us and

          Lit the room

Which we filled with our voices

          Together

An afternoon spent in

Joyous song

You and me, friends

          Together