Yesterday, we looked at one of my favorites among Wings’s current body of work, a piece he created last year expressly for his one-man show. I promised then that we would feature its companion piece today: smaller, with slightly different stampwork, but built around the same central gemstone — and around the same symbolism of diametrically opposed elements fused into one.
From the vantage of us mere mortals, such fusion requires guidance. Harnessing and managing the elements becomes workable only when approached with the greatest respect; in the face of such raw power, carelessness ensures ruin. In our way, of course, Spirit shows us how, keeps us safe, provided we are willing to heed the old lessons.
That overarching lesson is present in Wings’s stampwork on today’s featured piece. The dichotomous dance of fire and ice takes center stage, of course, at the top of the ring. But it is what underlies the stone, what supports it, that interests me: as the description notes, matched lodge symbols, signs of medicine, of healing, of protection. But when those symbols are themselves fused together, as they are here, they create something else: Eyes of Spirit, the embodiment of vision and wisdom and guidance that watches over and inspirits such lodges themselves. From the piece’s description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Fire and Ice Ring
In the interstices between worlds, the spirits and elemental forces afford us an occasional glimpse but do not admit us entry, lest we be consumed by their power. Yet Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, as in this solitaire, where earth and flame join to create a stone named for water frozen by the winter air. Conjoined lodge symbols trace the length of the band; the snowflake obsidian cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel. Top view shown below. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice cuff bracelet in the Bracelets Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
That fusion is perhaps what marks this season most fundamentally, summer not yet gone, winter tarrying still in the distance, and yet both join up in their dance of opposites, whirling upon the autumn winds, their complex steps lit by the glow of the slanting sun.
Now is a time to feel alive, to experience extremes and integrate them successfully into a state of being that is rare in its sense of seemingly easy physical comfort. I say “seemingly,” because, of course, it’s not easy for us humans; mornings and evenings are shock to the system, with temperatures not so far off the freezing mark. Unlike our counterparts in the animal, our bodies don’t grow sufficient fur or feathers to insulate us against the mercury’s rapid rise and fall. But throughout the main part of the day, it is at last comfortable: not too hot, not too cold, perfect for daily activity unencumbered by layers of either fabric or perspiration.
And, as is usually the case for me, it is the birds, the messenger spirits of the air, who show us how.
I heard a flicker early this morning, very close. He was alone for the moment, his mate elsewhere . . . and then I realized that he was not alone. He was at play with a small flock of less showy birds of similar size and shape. It took the camera’s zoom lens to identify them.
The meadowlarks have returned. For the first time, with their whole clan.
The meadowlarks are our heralds of spring in this place. What the calendar says is irrelevant; when you hear the first meadowlark’s song, you can be sure that spring is here. They stay through the early part of the summer, but this year, they departed more than a month ago, the absence of their song a noticeable void at dawn and dusk.
The most we get is a mated pair; when we are lucky, they return each spring. On rare occasions when we are luckier still, they decide to winter with us, safe in the knowledge that they will be welcome, fed, and relatively safe from predation during the cold months of snowy scarcity.
On this morning, they brought their extended family.
They are already well-prepared for winter; they all wear subdued cloaks, brown and white that blend with the grass now going rapidly dormant, the glow of their brilliant sunny golden fronts now mostly extinguished for safety’s sake.
Their song is also silent. Wings and were discussing this morning the fact that we have never heard their trademark call-and-response in winter, and wondered whether it was an evolutionary development designed to keep them alive: silence in the snowy season, so as not to draw the attention of larger raptors whose hunger will be heightened by the seasonal scarcity.
They are, perhaps, a perfect embodiment of this season, despite the fact that we have never hosted them in autumn before: a combining of summer’s gaudy glow with winter’s more subtle garb for survival’s sake, an object lesson in making the necessary preparations and adjustments to make it through the harder months.
An integration of fire and ice, a fusing of extremes into a livable existence.
~ Aji
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