The air is clearer today than it has been in some time, as though the late-day winds of yesterday ushered out all the haze of pollen and dust and smoke, leaving a cool, tamped-down earth in their wake.
It won’t last.
The winds are already rising, a slow, steady increase in velocity and force, and by sunset we will no doubt be visited again by the phenomenon that haunts our days this time of year: the dust light.
Sometimes it’s just a warm glow that softens the edges of our small world; sometimes it’s the glimmering of a million motes in the light; sometimes it’s the turning of the sun from gold to scarlet, its outlines limned by the veil surrounding it.
In times of drought, particularly, it’s hard to find much to celebrate in a season of dry, harsh winds. But there is beauty to be found in a dusty earth’s gift of a shimmering light.
Today’s featured work embodies this phenomenon with a warm and subtle radiance — a pair of earrings of the same name, flowering in Florentine silver and the chatoyant shades of a striated earth. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Dust Light Earrings
This is a place of extremes, of harsh weather and harder winds that create a mysterious phenomenon of dust light, our world illuminated in shades of earthy silhouette behind a veil of sand and smoke. Wings’s fourth entry in his signature series, revisited, of earrings that honor the light evokes the hazy shimmer of such magic in traditional silver form and jewels of chatoyant dark. Each drop is a perfectly circle domed from beneath, repoussé-fashion, t0 create a softly rounded concha. Across the front, an eight-pointed star extends to cardinal and ordinal points by way of hand-stamped spokes fanning outward around the center. Each spoke ends in a hoop whose task it is to link the lodge pattern, radiant with the literal and metaphorical light, that lies between each tiny circle. At the center of the starburst, in a sawtoothed bezel, sits a single round cabochon of luminous tiger’s eye, each glowing with earthy fire like sun and moon behind the desert dust. Conchas are polished to a soft Florentine finish; tiny silver jump rings attach the earrings securely to sterling silver wires. Earrings are 7/8″ across (excluding jump rings and wires); cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$350 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Now, at midday, the air remains clear; only the upper reaches of the aspens show movement in the breeze. Most of the ground is covered with green now, but the patches of bare earth that remain have gone bone-dry again, their sandy surfaces just waiting to be caught by higher winds and sent spiraling across the land.
While we wait for the rain — still more than a week off, if the forecast is to be believed — we cannot allow ourselves to become preoccupied with the problems of wind and weather and the walls of dust that travel across the land. We have too much work, and too many dangers that lurk, to become distracted by such inconveniences.
If we are to meet these tasks and survive these risks, we need to remember what is good and beautiful in the world, at any and every moment. For this day, that means honoring a dusty earth’s gift of a shimmering light.
~ 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.
