The dreaded day is past, and results have shaken out more or less as expected: some good news, some bad, and not nearly enough of the sea change needed to heal the ills bred and bound into the country’s blood and bone and DNA.
We expected no more, of course, Wings and I; survival under occupation requires maintaining a delicate balance between hoping for the best while expecting the worst. Like our ancestors, we understand, at a level deeper than bone, the need to work for the former. We also understand that maintaining the latter outlook is, in a colonial society, neither pessimistic nor apathetic, but rather, simple honesty that keeps us from getting to discouraged to continue the fight.
In its own way, it, too, is a form of humility.
The political season is, in so many, many ways antithetical to the values our cultures teach. And it points up why, as I have said so many times before, some of our cultures discourage or even outright forbid (in the formal sense of denying any sort of “official” cultural sanction) the seeking or accepting of public honor. It’s because our cultures, always community-oriented, understood on a very fundamental level the dangers of vanity. Someone vain enough, self-promoting enough, to seek public acclaim was someone acting out of selfish motives, without the best interests of the people at heart. It’s why the best (and most effective) leaders were those who had to be persuaded to lead, whether by request of the people or command of the spirits. Humble men and women do not see themselves as deserving of special status, and indeed, shy away from its snares.
It’s also why we both perpetually caution outsiders against appointing and anointing anyone to speak for any of us, and why we ever and always speak only for ourselves.
Of course, in a colonized land, we are perforce required to participate in structures imposed from without. Audre Lord’s caution that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house is true enough on the psychological level, but structural oppression and inequality utterly negate it on a practical level; in a society deliberately designed for the purposes of slavery and genocide, those with the least power must wrest away control of some of those tools and turn them to better purpose if we are ever to fix that which colonialism has worked so thoroughly to destroy.
And at the national level, yesterday brought us a few such instances, including the election of the first two Native women to Congress. These are women that we have every reason to believe will carry out the commands of our collective cultures, remaining humble and working on behalf of the people in ways that their opponents (and predecessors) have never once entertained doing.
It has been two years almost to the day since Wings and I began work on this series. It was, in the aftermath of the 2016 abomination, a corrupted and stolen sham of an election, with a genocidal Nazi sympathizer installed superficially by a hostile foreign power and at a more fundamental level by the purposeful, hate-filled bigotry, willing to countenance cheating at all levels to seize authority, that is bred deep in the DNA of “America,” our own small stab at a new resistance: a way to return our focus to our fundamental values and give them, in some way, tangible form; a way, too, perhaps, to transmit those values, the virtues or “gifts,” to those on the outside, to inspire them to internalize them and act upon them now. [I wrote last week about the series’ genesis and its latest expression, here.] It’s been a humbling two years for us, too, with drastic changes, many for the better — but also great losses, underscored by a couple of near-death experiences that make survival all the sweeter. And so, it’s perhaps fitting that this should be the day we first feature, individually, the first two entries from the latest collection in the series, The Humility Collection.
As always with these collections, there is at least an informal order to their presentation. Of the seven, two have already sold, but I’ll include them on their appointed days (this Saturday and Sunday upcoming, in company with other entries in the series), for purposes of telling the whole story, so to speak. We begin today with the first three in the collection, all of which remain available, and all of which speak to aspects of our immediate natural environment that work to teach us humility on a daily basis. We begin with the first, one whose message is especially salient now as the autumn days grow ever shorter, leading us rapidly now into winter. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Seasons and Time Coil Bracelet
Seasons and time are eternal, forces that teach us humility by their very endurance, humbling us in the face of their inexorable power. They teach us, too, to deal with impermanence: of weather, of youth, of troubled times and good ones, too. Wings honors their lessons in this coil of jewels, anchored at either end with pairs of faceted beads of smoky quartz, wrought in the wisdom-infused shape of eyes of Spirit. At each end, the coil begins with the blue skies of spring in the form of lightly polished free-form nuggets of robin’s-egg blue turquoise, moving thence into the brilliant greens of summer by way of lengths of smoothly polished geometric nuggets of malachite. From summer, we travel along the hoop to autumn, represented by smooth fiery amber, free-form and slender. Fall fire moves gently into the snows of winter, its white expanses formed from small polished chips of Hawai’ian puka shell. Both ends meet in the middle of the light, flanking a row of seven more Eyes of Spirit wrought in the exponential diamond patterns of faceted smoky quartz. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. First in The Humility Collection of The Seventh Fire Series. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; turquoise; malachite; amber; puka shell; smoky quartz
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
But if seasons and time work their inexorable effects on us, so, too, do more immediately perceptible forces. The irony is that we are perhaps less consciously aware of the latter than of the former, yet we bow to their powers daily, those of the wheel, the winds, and the sacred directions. The second coil in this series summons their force even as it follows their path. From its description in the same section of the same gallery:
The Wheel, the Winds, and the Sacred Directions Coil Bracelet
Our ways teach us to respect the lessons of the wheel, the winds, and the Sacred Directions, powers and animating spirits far stronger than we who show us the value of humility in the face of cosmic forces. Wings pays tribute to these cardinal powers with a spiral of gems in the colors assigned to them: white, yellow, red, and black, accented with the colors of the light. Each end of the coil is anchored with a bit of that light in the form of a quartet of small round Labradorite beads. Inward from either end is a length of luminescent round black beads, solid hematite, representing the westerly powers; four more Labradorite beads separate them from the southern forces, manifest in bold natural nuggets of Mediterranean coral. After another brief interval of Labradorite, the spirits of the east make their appearance via lengths of brilliantly translucent golden citrine, slender free-form nuggets given a coarse texture and a high polish. Four more Labradorite beads on either side separate them from the center expanse of seven round white fluorite orbs, representing the awe-inspiring powers of the north, keeping us humble in the face of the forces of the most powerful of storms, and of the very powers of life and death. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. Second in The Humility Collection of The Seventh Fire Series. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; white fluorite; Labradorite; citrine; Mediterranean coral; hematite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
All of the forces above, and many not yet acknowledged, combine to influence our days in another, still more immediate way: weather. In this place, weather is truly awe-inspiring, harsh and beautiful and dangerous, infused with the animating power of spirits that can take as easily as they give, yet are utterly necessary to our survival. The third coil in this collection speaks to their unique abilities, including the ability to keep us humble on what is truly a daily basis. From its description in the same section of the same gallery:
Weathering the Elements Coil Bracelet
Little teaches us humility as effectively as extremes of weather and climate. With this spiraling spangled coil, Wings calls upon these powerful forces for aid in weathering the elements. Each end begins with tiny polished free-form nuggets, little more than chips of sky blue turquoise in earthy matrix, each separated from the brilliance of more valuable blue turquoise by the golden artifice of iron pyrite — fool’s gold, a gift of the spirits to keep us humble when greed threatens to overtake good sense. Beyond the blue of Skystone and rain comes the power of fire — first amber, representing the golden edges of the flame, then bright red Mediterranean coral nuggets, the fire itself, all flanking a center row of bold doughnut-shaped rondel beads carved from impossibly chatoyant red tiger’s eye, like the very heart of the sun. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Another view shown below. Third in The Humility Collection of The Seventh Fire Series. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; red tiger’s eye; Mediterranean coral; amber; blue turquoise; blue turquoise in matrix; iron pyrite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If weathering the elements is a challenge for mere mortals, weathering the political storms is these days an even greater one. We have gotten through one more of those, or part of it, anyway. There will be many more to come, and some of them will be far more dangerous than the dominant culture can possibly conceive.
Arrogance put us here — arrogance and vanity, selfishness and greed. Humility is what will lead us through to a better world on the other side.
Part of that is realizing that the work never ends.
Part of it is recognizing our place in the world, and the simple fact that none of us is above the work.
Part of it is getting down to it.
It’s a time to be humble. It’s time to get to work.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
