ON SUNSETS
An ode to golden hour; ghosts from the past; and life's exploding colors.
Growing up, my parents had a framed photograph of the sun setting over Blue Mountain Lake in the Adirondacks. It wasn’t until I was six or seven that I realized this abstraction of pink, purple, and orange was actually the sun descending into the lake I loved to swim in. To this day, I continue to be wowed by a sunset, though when I was a child, I didn’t really understand what the big deal was. Why are the grownups always asking for a room with a view? Who cares about a sunset! Now a woman of forty-two, I go to great lengths not to miss it. I’m reminded of Sido, Colette’s mother, in her novel, Break of Day, who declines an invitation to visit her daughter because her pink cactus flower is about to bloom.
That’s how I feel about sunsets.
Recently, I was in Santa Fe on a writing assignment for a travel magazine. At night, I’d stand on the terrace of the adobe in my white nightgown, watching the sun set pink, purple, then orange, over the Sangre de Cristo mountains. An herbalist I interviewed told me that the spirit of Santa Fe was very maternal. “She’ll hold you, just wait,” the woman said. Enveloped by the setting sun, I indeed felt held by something bigger than myself.
I watched the hotel proprietor down below as she closed up for the night, brushing past the bushes of yellow yarrow, purple cone flowers, the blossoming pink cacti. She cut a stark Georgia O’Keefe-like figure against all this color, clutching her black dress, her black hat tipped just so.
I remembered how, many years earlier, at my neighborhood dive bar in Dumbo, Brooklyn, there was a photographer named Johnny Antonio. You could count on him being there at the end of day as you could count on the sun setting. As the metallic river light shot through the bar, he’d tell us as he’d told us dozens of nights before, “The mountains in Santa Fe are like… a woman’s body, baby.” I’d roll my eyes at Julian, the bartender, and raise my glass to Johnny Antonio. “Yes, Johnny Antonio, the mountains in Santa Fe are like a woman’s body.”
But he was right.
The Sangre de Cristo mountains are smooth and soft, unmoved by the nightly dance of gold, then violet. Standing there, I thought about everything that had happened to my own body since those golden hours in Brooklyn. How I toured the country with my band, twenty-some cities in twenty-some nights, never sleeping, out til dawn. How I became a mother shortly after, struggling to breathe as the surgeon cut my twins out of my center. How I saw my son, Lou through brain cancer, twice, seesawing between the hospital and West at home, always in transit, somehow never getting sick myself. Only to lose my left breast to a cancer all my own, four years later, in a plot twist that remains as wild to me as the sun’s exploding colors.
I held my barely healed chest as the sun became a sliver of light. The red scars were still raised and swollen, like the mountains. The problem with losing ones left breast is the whole situation is above your heart. After the mastectomy, and throughout reconstruction, it was hard for me to know if the buzzing and pulling, the beating and stretching, was from losing my breast or if there was something wrong with my heart, maybe it was failing altogether?
Panicked, I looked back down at the hotel proprietor. She waved up at me, and I waved back. In the almost darkness, we both watched the sun finish its bleed into the horizon.
Sometimes I want to be six or seven again, swimming in Blue Mountain Lake, dodging my father’s camera. Other times, like those nights at the bar with Johnny Antonio, on the road with the band, or on assignment in Santa Fe, I have been happy to feel a part of something bigger than myself. Despite the situation above my heart, I know I can still count on the setting sun. And tomorrow, the break of day.
A MEDITATION
May we claim what nourishes us.
Feel free to share the small but essential moments you just. can’t. miss in the comments. I look forward to experiencing them, too.
Sending you all love during this continued time of suffering in our world. Take care of yourselves, each other. May all beings be safe, happy, healthy, and FREE.
Thank you so much for being here.
xx Alexa
PS. Below is the charming letter in Break of Day, from Colette’s mother, Sido to her daughter’s husband, explaining why she cannot come for a visit. I really recommend the whole book. Enjoy!
Sir,
You ask me to come and spend a week with you, which means I would be near my daughter, whom I adore. You who live with her know how rarely I see her, how much her presence delights me, and I’m touched that you should ask me to come see her. All the same, I’m not going to accept your kind invitation, for the time being at any rate. The reason is that my pink cactus is probably going to flower. It’s a very rare plant I’ve been given, and I’m told that in our climate it flowers only once every four years, Now, I am already a very old woman, and if I went away when my pink cactus is about to flower, I am certain I shouldn’t see it flower again.So I beg you, Sir, to accept my sincere thanks and my regrets, together with my kind regards.— Sidonie Colette
(Colette, Break of Day, 1928)
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Thanks so much for being here whichever way it works for you :)
Thank you for this beautifully written break from my mundane morning! I often point out the pink clouds at sunset to my kids, and I'm sometimes ignored. Next time, I'll say to myself "Alexa knows what I'm talking about anyway!" xoxo
Using this as my forever excuse: "I’m not going to accept your kind invitation, for the time being at any rate. The reason is that my pink cactus is probably going to flower."