SunDrop

I love this word, but what is it? Is a sundrop like a lemon drop? An egg yolk? Seems like something squishy, warm and adorable. Something to get really excited about. Is it a raindrop that falls when it's sunny? Seems like something you could divide infinitely. Did you know that gold is so generous, it lets you spread it so thin that approximately 7,000 sheets of gold leaf reach the height of a dime. After my first shammanic healing I felt drenched with sundrops and then and took the F train home in a daze of bliss. (thanks, Joe!)



Here's my new sundrop in book form. I bought this Miranda July story collection at the Community Bookstore on 7th Avenue in Parkslope. Love that place, love to visit Gomez the Iguana (he's a her) Priscilla the dog, and the cat whose name I don't know, whom I saw sleeping on the best sellers. (That's how cat's read, cause they're psychic!) Talk about entitlement! I got it for my book group started by my friend who is much more cultured than I. I am the only non-librarian in the group, and by far the least well read.

I keep this book displayed in my house like a relic, although I haven't read it yet and don't really know if I'll like it. Right now I'm having an intense relationship with the way it looks. I'm bewitched by it. When I first saw the book I thought it looked weird, too simple, but I've been falling more deeply in love with the simplicity and directness of it's design every day. The generosity of the yellow, like the summer sun, too generous in July so we have to use sunscreen.

And the title "Nobody Belongs Here More than You." I want to know who Miranda is talking to. She is brilliant and I know she knows that a message like that slips into the unconscious and creates a happy mood for the reader, who thinks, really? It's ok that I'm here? Me? This is my place? I didn't know? I thought it belonged to them!

Who is she talking to? People with low self esteem? "Losers?" People who are ashamed of their clothes or having a bad hair day? Is she talking to old people who feel like their time is over? Young people who feel like the world isn't theirs yet? Immigrants? Is she talking to people whose co-op application was rejected? People who can't afford the rents around here anymore? People with language issues? Is she talking to people the way Tom Petty spoke when he sang "You don't have to live like a refugee?" Seems like she's advocating for everyone, medicine for the whatever kind of marginalization we're poisoned with. Maybe that's what a sundrop is, a kind of antidote.

Or maybe it's not meant in such a positive way, maybe she's saying "No one belongs in this Mental Ward more than you."

I don't think so. I choose not to think so. I'll read this book in a little while (got 3 kids, ya know...). But until then I'll keep projecting possibilities onto it's blank screen, and adoring it. Maybe I'll even buy it a teeny- weeny bikini and a beach chair.