I awakened in the earliest hours of this first full day of summer: A half-hour after midnight, and the dog wants to go out and run.
It would be a gift. As I went to the door, I could see the night sky through the long glass pane, the waning three-quarter moon having only just cleared the ridgeline of the southeast peaks as it began its ascent. It hung there, suspended, low, large, and impossibly dark, the color of pure amber edged in smoke. Above it, a thin front of silvery clouds flared at angles across the southern sky, stars like diamonds showing through the open spaces. The very dark itself, clear and sharp, seemed to glow — summoned through summer’s alchemy, a magic light made of dust and smoke.
Post-dawn, and the smoke has returned; if predictions are accurate, the dust won’t be far behind. It makes this the perfect time to highlight today’s featured work, one whose very name embodies the magic present in our high-desert skies just after midnight. From its description on the second page of 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
For the moment, our day is hazy, fraught with pale particulate matter and the promise of more to come. The wind is only a soft breeze at the moment, but expected to pass the twenty-mile-an-hour mark by afternoon. And there will be hay dust added to the veil of cottonwood pollen and drying earth and wildfire smoke soon, as cutting commences shortly.
After a spring both unusually warm and unusually wet, summer has presented itself: unseasonably cool, dry, wrapped in a veil of dust and smoke. These are days in which the very breeze steals breath, when simply being, out of doors, is itself work. Add to that the work of summer itself, haying and planting, irrigating and cultivating, on top of all the year-round tasks of day to day that keep this place in motion and harmony, and it’s easy to forget that the season is a gift — easier still to forget that that which complicates our lives can also carry a discrete and dazzling beauty of its own.
Had the dog not awakened me, under protest, in the first hour of the day, I would have missed it: silver veil, amber moon, diamond stars, and a magic light made of dust and smoke.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
