At long last yesterday, the sun returned. A light breeze drove out the remaining clouds around midday, but as of yesterday evening, the smoke plume had returned, hovering at the southwestern horizon like a storm crouched just offshore, awaiting that slight change in the wind that will bring it inland.
This morning, though, even that has has been driven out, and with the dawn came the perfect clarity of an autumn day. The garden is still alive despite the best efforts of snow and freezing temperatures, and if the trees are more gold now, there is still more green than we expected to survive. By all the evidence, we awakened this day to a prospering world, one not so much between seasons now one capable of holding and inhabiting them simultaneously, a world that lives by the grace of opposing forces.
Today’s featured work similarly inhabits this powerful dichotomy, this unlikely thriving thanks to powers that, to mere mortal eyes, would seem to work against each other. It is, too, a manifestation of that which too many fear, but which, as Wings knows from old ways, is capable of conferring great abundance. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Prospering World Cuff Bracelets
The spirits honor hard work and a life well lived in the old way by answering prayers for a prospering world. Wings evokes one of these spirits of prosperity in silver and stone by way of his own signature style: a hand-split cuff in the cold shape of Serpent, he who bears good fortune. This version of the snake is the same one who lends his talents to Medicine, a rattler bearing jewels of the earth in rich fertile colors. The band is formed of a single piece of sterling silver, hand-split so that head and tail extend in opposite directions to coil around the wrist. Small hand-stamped points form his eyes; tiny hoops, his snout and heavily layered rattle; lodge symbols adorn the two intermediate ends of the uniquely-styled band. He is that fierce member of his clan, the diamondback, with tiny hand-stamped versions of the pattern alternating between the gemstones he bears along his back, ten small round bezel-set cabochons of jade and tiger’s eye. Band is 6″ long by 7/16″ across; cabochons are 5/16″ across (dimensions approximate); the band has significant flexibility, but is designed for a smaller wrist (6.5″ or less). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; jade; tiger’s eye
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s one of my favorite works, a piece of extraordinary, even intimidating power. A colonial world has reduced its inhabitants to an atavistic fear of snakes, one that responds with violence rather than recognizing the important role they play in a healthy habitat.
Our cultures are different. Even among peoples for whom Serpent is no friend, the answer has always been avoidance, not violence. For others, they are neutral forces, left to their own devices as they leave us to ours. For others still, they are a positive force, rattles lent to us for healing, water-inhabiting cousins keeping our own waters safe and abundant.
As I write, the world outside the window is going white again — not snow this time, but the smoke plume once again, arrived on shifting winds. But the sky above remains blue, the grass and the aspens still mostly green, the immediate gold more the gift of abundant sun than of decaying leaves. The air is warm once again, and the sharp edge and tang of fall ride the gentle wind.
This day, we are reminded once again the we inhabit a world that lives by the grace of opposing forces, and that world remains a prospering one now.
~ Aji
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