Climate change has altered all of our usual patterns here, some in ways that are already starkly clear. Not all are unpleasant: While the meadowlarks seem to have departed early, we’ve been blessed with a pair of flickers year-round this year. A couple of weeks ago, a pair of young glossy ibises who had detoured far, far off their usual migratory path paid us a visit for a day. The hummingbirds are still here, as a pair of mated monarch butterflies, the occasional mourning cloak and tiger swallowtail, and yesterday morning, for the first time ever, we were paid a visit by a black swallowtail.
And then there are the dragonflies.
In a typical year, they will show up mid-season — mid-season as temperature defines it, not by the calendar’s reckoning. By mid-August, they are vanishing, if not already gone; this is normally the heart of the monsoon season, and while they love the wet weather, the colder air is hard for them.
This year, most of our rains in this place came early; in recent weeks, we’ve had very few showers, although they’ve spiraled on all sides of us almost daily. We do have the concomitant temperatures, though; mornings dawn in the mid-forties, the air cold and crisp and crackling with an autumnal feel. Midday remains mostly hot, but by evening, you’ll need long sleeves to be comfortable out of doors.
Still, the last round of irrigation filled the pond, and a few days ago, the water came again. The pond has overflowed its banks to north and east, soaking the grass, and the dragonflies have returned in force. The are tiny messengers, of life, of love, of hope, of inspiration, and they inspire Wings’s own work.
A couple of weeks ago, he created two new works in their image, both of them pairs of earrings, both of them already having found their wearers. at this time last year, however, they inspired a work much larger and more substantial than their tiny spirits would suggest, one of Wings’s masterpieces, in both style and spirit. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Sometimes, a piece of art transcends its intended purpose, becoming so much more than its basic function and the sum of its parts that it qualifies as a masterwork, a perfect melding of symbol and spirit. So it is with this necklace, a manifestation of Dragonfly: water spirit, protector, symbol of love, messenger of the spirits. Handcrafted of finely stamped sterling silver half-round wire, his shimmery wings textured by countless strikes of a tiny jeweler’s hammer, he arrives dressed in the colors of the Pueblo dawn. His body is formed from delicate rose quartz cabochons: seven of them, a number sacred to many peoples, and stones that some other traditions regard as the mineral embodiment of the qualities of peace and universal love. His amber eyes blaze with the fiery glow of the rising sun; he carries a glowing copper serpent on his back, traversing his wings (image shown below). He hangs from a hand-strung necklace of square-cut leopard-skin jasper beads in warm shades of rose and brick red and taupe and gray, tying all the hues together. The strand is backed by a series of copper-colored trade-style beads terminating in a small series of old natural green turquoise “doughnut” beads with their own copper matrix. The dragonfly pendant is 2-5/8″ long from antennae to base and 2-7/16″ wide across the wingspan; the strand of beads is 17″ (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; rose quartz; amber; copper;leopard-skin jasper beads; trade-style beads; green turquoise beads
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I’ve written here about Dragonfly before: about its identity as symbol, about its role as messenger. As I said then:
He can fly, under his own power, in six separate directions: forward, backward, upward, downward, sideward to the left, sideward to the right. This is not, as is forced upon us mammals, an example of backpedaling or sidestepping; it’s an ability to fly straight and directly in those directions. And the fast and powerful beating of his wings permit him, like his cousin Hummingbird (also a messenger), to hover.
Who better to receive and carry Spirit’s messages to the people — and carry back their prayers and thanks in return — than a fast and powerful being who can hover in one place long enough to receive and deliver the message?
The copper serpent was an inspired choice, one that brings the piece’s symbolism directly home to me: It’s a spirit and a substance that are inextricably intertwined in a beautiful story of courage and abundance. Placing it across the Messenger’s wings feels, to me, like a promise from Spirit itself.
That’s a message for all seasons.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
