Still August for two days yet, and still already fully autumn now — and yet, none of our usual patterns hold. A world decimated by climate change seems intent on creating new patterns for itself now, and while they may be unfamiliar to us here, it will be our task to adapt.
In truth, not all of them are unwelcome: Last night, yet again, we were granted the gift of the rain in the dark hours. It was no momentary shower, either; dawn broke this day across a cloud-laced sky above an earth wet and revived, rain barrels once again half-full.
It will not be enough; in a drought this deep, it’s never enough. But we will take what the spirits grant us, and be grateful.
Our markers for such gratitude have changed now, too, of course: no song, no drum, no dance, no feast to mark summer’s end or the harvest to come, such as it may be. We are children of pandemic now, forced by a colonial world to close off all the more public paths to ceremony in order to survive, even as the drought has deprived the land of water and reduced most crops to dust.
Ceremony this year will be not merely private but intensely personal, families and individuals observing and honoring as they are able and see fit. For us, that is always the case; the land is such an integral part of our daily labors that we have long since learned to make each day’s work its own observance, its own celebration: a feast, and offering, a ceremony for elemental forces and essential spirits.
Today’s featured work embodies product and process, object and act. It’s one of Wings’s newest pairs of earrings, wrought in the powerful shapes and shades of end-of-summer spirits, of the forces, so capable of great destruction, that nonetheless keep our world alive. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Storm and Fire Earrings
Summer is the season of storm and fire, of cobalt clouds and molten copper sunsets. Wings summons them all into a vortex of color and spirit with these dangling earrings. Each is built around a composite focal cabochon of brilliant blue lapis lazuli and shimmering strands of copper webbing. Each is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then adorned with a hand-coiled pendant polished copper, glowing like a whirlwind lit from within. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) by 5/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1.5″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; coiled copper pendants are 1/4″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli and copper composite; copper
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
We were granted the storm last night; a faint haze of smoke from distant fires still filters into the atmosphere today. There is precious little chance for rain in the extended forecast now . . . and yet, the clouds already climbing high into the heavens seem to belie such predictions.
Perhaps our work, our daily efforts at thanksgiving, our prayers and offerings, perhaps they are enough: enough for ceremony, enough to honor, and be acknowledged by, elemental forces and essential spirits.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
