Whenever I feel like the world is becoming too much, I pull out one of my many Maira Kalman books to peruse and within minutes, I feel better.
If you don’t already know who Maira Kalman is, I am pleased to be the one to introduce you.
Maira is an Israeli-born American artist and writer who delights in ordinary things like walks, ironing, dogs, cakes and whimsical hats but also in Abraham Lincoln and Alice B Tolkas and Thomas Jefferson.
You may have seen her New Yorker Covers or bought a puzzle with her art or perhaps you followed her popular New York Times blog on the Founding Fathers, And the Pursuit of Happiness, which was made into a book. Maira jots down her appreciation for all these things in simple short sentences that instantly seize your anxiety and throw it out the window. She draws magnificent whimsical illustrations of these observations.
There were a few years when my friend Sarah H and I bought each other the latest Maira book for our birthdays. It was a gift we knew we, ourselves would like, so we just kept adding to our collection. It was as if we were sending each other a piece of ourselves.
If your only experience of Maira were the first 10 pages of And the Pursuit of Happiness, you’d feel that tension between your shoulder blades loosen. In those first few pages, Maira guides us on a drive south to Washington DC while listening to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson sing Bach’s Cantatas. I actually put the tracks on Spotify as I thumbed through the pages and let me tell you, it is Divine.
“Now is the time of grace,” Maira writes. She shouts out a Hallelujah for various sights in her day. This is not a religious book. Maira is Jewish and answered the question of her spiritual background to Krista Tippet on the On Being Podcast as,
…All of my work goes back to my childhood, as many people can say about their lives, and even the childhood of my mother in Belarus. I’m constantly relating to and living in the family — the stories, the light, the air, the sea, the cafés, the fluttering awnings. All of that resonates so strongly for me in all of my work, and I’m painting and writing about it all the time and even more so now.
Through Maira’s eyes all the world sings an exaltation. She shouts out Hallelujah for “the Walt Whitman rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike where the plastic flowers in the women's restroom looked quite noble.” And yes, she paints a picture of the women's restroom.
She exalts at women’s church hats and a painting at the National Gallery of a mound a butter and two eggs.
Maira goes on about the people and objects and moments that capture our imagination and ultimately our hope.
In reading Maria Kalman’s work, you grasp the intensity of joy. And you realize, joy and hope are deeply entwined. And You want Everything. All of it. The feral force of hope that breathes in the wind and light and air and people around us.
And you? Where do you find it?
Love Maira! Thank you for the reminder to re-read her pieces.
I really enjoy your writings, they bring me to a quietly introspective spot which is difficult to do in these days. Thank you so much for sharing.