The Thread

This email conversation between Maria Popova and Maira Kalman makes me crave more thoughtful, deep email conversations. #

Maria Popova + Maira Kalman

Maria Popova is the writer and self-described “interestingness hunter-gatherer” behind the immensely popular website and newsletter Brain Pickings. Each day, Popova contributes new essays—keenly observed and heavy with quotes and hyperlinks—celebrating bold and beautiful ideas in practically every field of thought imaginable. Brain Pickings is the perfect syllabus for the creative, questioning mind, which helps explain the deep kinship between Popova and artist Maira Kalman. As the author and illustrator of dozens of books exemplifying her unique imagination and voracious curiosity, Kalman is in many ways the embodiment of the Brain Pickings ideal: creative, intellectually adventurous, and always open to inspiration. In the following Thread, the friends discuss broken bones, quote Sontag and Thoreau, and ponder a gigantic pair of undies.

From: Maria Popova

To: Maira Kalman

Dear Maira,
I thought of you on Monday, mid-sentence. I was rereading Sontag's On Photography—the winter weather go-to, it seems—where she writes that “the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood.” And somehow I remembered that beautiful photograph of your mother pinned to the inspiration wall above your desk (and above Kafka's photograph—but that's another rabbit hole of musings), and I suddenly wondered how one tacks photographs with a broken arm.
…which is all to say: How’s the arm? How’s the spirit? Do you need help pinning your consciousness to the wall?
Love, Maria

From: Maira Kalman

To: Maria Popova

dear maria, no pinning on the wall. the broken arm is a semi-forced stillness. i keep remembering the hardness of the sidewalk on impact. arghh. but now on the mend. i am clearing my brain for going back to work in the studio. but my thoughts are that i wish for ease and not difficulty. music. painting. remembering. writing. erasing. writing. reading robert walser’s The Walk. walking. walking. maria, what are you going to do today? what will you do this evening? are you going to the post office? to the motor vehicle bureau? but tell me other if that is not of interest. yours, maira

From: Maria Popova

To: Maira Kalman

Dear Maira,
“Semi-forced stillness”—despite the unfortunate circumstances, is it wrong that I find this rather enviable? Probably. Or perhaps it says something about our culture, or my life, or both. (My friend Amanda recently had hand surgery and her email auto-responder noted that. For a brief moment, I considered giving myself an actual hand injury so I could have an honest temporary hedge against the Sisyphean tyranny of the inbox.)
The Walser book is new to me—do you love it? Is it anything like Thoreau’s Walking? I think of it a thousand times a day, at least. Back to that constant practice, and often losing game, of inner stillness…. “What business have I in the woods, if I am thinking of something out of the woods?”
In any case, the plan for this afternoon was to go drop off some books at Housing Works, but the woeful wetness outside makes for a bike basket full of soaked paper pulp on arrival—hardly a donatable thing. (Plans made, plans derailed—isn't that the rain dance of life?)
How is your Cooper Hewitt project going? The opera? You know, My Favorite Things has become my favorite go-to gift for friends. Sometimes I even sticky-tab some wishes onto the pages I think the person would especially enjoy.
And now, back to the woods.
Love, Maria

From: Maira Kalman

To: Maria Popova

dear maria, everyone who sees me is semi-sorry and semi-envious. there is a lot of too much going around and some need for calm in the air. maybe. i am getting you a copy of The Walk and you will go nuts. i have not read thoreau's Walk, but getting it today at the strand. the cooper hewitt is opening on friday. i will meet you there one day. there is a video of the earliest dancing and toscanini's pants, a queen victoria memorial hankie, abraham lincoln's pocket watch, rietveld's zig-zag chair and and and. nico muhly has composed stunning songs about the objects, which will play in the gallery. and there is a good cafe in the museum—vital—where we can sit afterward and ponder some things. and central park is right across the street. i am including an image of my favorite object these days: queen victoria's capacious bloomers! they went up for auction. what would she have thought? have a sweet wednesday. what are you doing today? yours, m

From: Maria Popova

To: Maira Kalman

Dear Maira,
What buxom bloomers! They look like something that belongs in Emily Spivack's book—one wonders what "worn stories" the queen might have told about them. Just yesterday, coincidentally, I sent Emily an article I read about a 500-year-old puffy shirt discovered by archeologists in China. The perfect pairing for the bloomers—in fact, they seem like they came from the same outfit. (Also found in the Chinese tomb were the woman's slippers, uncannily reminiscent of the slippers in My Favorite Things!)
How exciting about the Cooper Hewitt opening. And a date with you and the queen in a cozy museum cafe sounds like an afternoon well lived—let's do it.
This morning, I had tea with Parker Palmer—do you know (of) him? A wonderful older gentleman—the kind of person just emanating goodness. He's had such an interesting life—went to Berkeley in the ’50s, had a brief and disenchanting stint as an ad man during the Mad Men era, spent 11 years in the Quaker community, then founded the Center for Courage & Renewal and became a sort of secular sage, a Thoreau of the psyche. His books, in fact, read much like Thoreau's journals. (Why is it that we always come back to Thoreau—we, you and I; we, the universal we?)
How are you feeling today? What plans are you making and remaking?
Love, // m

From: Maira Kalman

To: Maria Popova

dear maria.
the walser book has arrived. now i will go to the post office and send it to you. i walked through the park. i met john heginbotham, the choreographer, and we spoke about creating a ballet. i took the bus back down fifth avenue. people dressed up. noses red. everything is insanely sparkly.
until soon.
yours, m

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