Wholistic Fitness

�

A Single New Mexico Sunset

a yogi�s gift to you

on a difficult day for many

a token for your mental well being

by coach ilg

on the eve of

september 11, 2002

To have you witness the evening before me, is my greatest wish. Another New Mexico evening has just seduced a weary late summer day. Rain clouds, pregnant with their long awaited and precious cargo, have gathered overhead. Bulleting the kaleidescope sky flies a cliff swallow and starts a one-bird show with darts and dives above the Rio Grande. Sunlit poplar trees applaud with golden waves from below. The swallow soars with purposed flair, as if scripting a love letter, invisible and inaudible upon the thundering sky. Another swallow joins her acrobatics. He too, dares the wind with graceful arcs and kamikaze plunges. He can flirt with a dogwood willow and frisk celestial cloud in a flicker of a moment. Maybe heaven is to feel like the way swallows can fly.

As if on cue, both birds exit the scene with a seductive snap of wings. A bewitching theater of wind, land, and sky remains. Pale cottonwoods and a few pathetic pinyons, both weary with drought, receive the spirit of the evening and slowly begin to dance. A Townsend�s solitaire, fidgets an apache plume with delighted fluttering. Perhaps he too, senses the rare treasure of rain. Beside me a black sage absorbs lingering pastel light and fingers the wind, as if reaching for the rain. I am quick to run my eyes over as much of this canvass as possible…past San Luis Cabezon, beyond the pueblos of Santa Anna and San Felipe, past the tendrils of pines pressing down on Sandia Peak. I want to grab it all hard. I want to yank every smell, each shaft of light, every splinter of stone into my memory in a wild, lovemaking way so I never forget it. I am willing to be greedy here. I know this moment will soon be over. Thirty feet from me bristles a rabbitbrush, her withered limbs shiver in a portrait of death. Time takes it toll on all flesh be it plant, mineral, animal, or human. But this evening, the feeble foliage and scrawny creatures of this mesa all dance. Rain has begun to fall and life on the mesa arises in ovation as the needed wetness drapes itself over the land like illuminaria.

Why should raindrops smacking dehydrated red dirt touch me so? An achingly intense spaciousness spreads over these volcanic mesas and pinyon punched mountains. This ocean of space was created by a million evenings just like this one. This one sunset is but a fragile twitch within one eon of an eon of eons. Mountains may flicker, planets may stumble, but as humans, fragile twitches are all we get. Our entire lives are created by moments. That�s why i try so hard to make people pay attention to them. It is the very nature and ability of any given moment to sustain what is best and sacred within us.

To me the lessons from a year ago are the same as from this sunset:

Appreciate what you have already,

produce that which makes others smile,

do what you cherish doing,

be with the one whom you know you deserve,

be courageous enough to at least try,

and

be brave enough to always,

endlessly love.

no matter what

no matter whom.

From this New Mexico evening, I bow to you, Noble Warrior. May you soar into your moments as a cliff swallow before a sunset. May you always be free, strong, and sincere in all you do.

coach ilg

rio rancho, new mexico

9/10/02