“Let me accompany you for as long as it suits. Let us be frozen in time.” 8″ x 10″, acrylic on canvas, October 2007. A painting based on Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty.

A spectacular evening of great books, profound thoughts, amazing music, and to top it off, a marble hallway filled with mocha cream cakes for us to eat. I felt like we were living out one of the pages in Maira Kalman’s stories. She’s at the top of my list of favorite illustrators/writers/absolutely-inspiring human beings.

Maira Kalman’s The Principles of Uncertainty is the must-own book of the year, in my opinion. The book is filled from cover to cover with her incredible full-color illustrations (most of them are paintings, each in itself a masterpiece), and the writings are her musings (from her year-long column in the New York Times), with personalities like Nabokov, Freud, Lincoln making appearances, in addition to the many ordinary people like the old lady walking down the street and the little girl in the park, who are each special in their own way. It’s the perfect mix of humor and some really touching thoughts on old age and departed loved ones. You can read the pages over and over, there’s just so much to look at and think about.

I’ll leave you with that, it’s a rainy day in Brooklyn and I’m going back to my book.

October 24th, 2007