It rained overnight, in the indigo hours, a small soft slight fall scarcely worthy of the word “storm,” too quiet to awaken anyone not already up before the dawn. There is more to come, long gentle drops already glancing off the window even now — but unless the spirit of the day transforms itself drastically, this will be a quiet, soaking rain of early autumn, not a howling gale foretelling of winter.
We are just enough past the monsoon that there may be no lighting, nor thunder, either, at least not here. If the radar map is accurate, though, what lies just beyond the peaks is another matter, and it is this storm that threatens to spin off its own tendrils of wind and water and electric light to touch this land at the mountains’ feet.
Millennia of literary metaphors have reduced the motif of the storm to a relentlessly negative symbolism, one synonymous with hardship — at least within the dominant culture. For us, the lines are less clearly defined.
Some of of were born of and for the storm, in ways literal and metaphorical, and for us, thunder and lighting are not merely old friends, but family. They lend us mere mortals a taste of their raw elemental power, a force that has as much capacity for purification as it does for destruction, for renewal as for desolation.For us, the thunder is the dum, the lightning the dance, and the rain the song of the cosmos itself, and we move between the lines of their power with more gratitude than fear.
Meditations on such forces call to mind today’s featured work, one as simple as the elements themselves, and as symbolically powerful. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
When the Lightning Comes Cuff Bracelet
When the lightning comes, it summons the elemental forces, renewing the world by the power of the storm. Wings pays tribute to its role with this new solid sterling silver cuff, rendered in heavy three-gauge cube wire. Deeply stamped linked bolts of lightning chase each other down the surface of the band, the blank space on the side of each line centered by a tiny round hoop, each its own drop of cleansing rain. More drops accent each side of the band, spaced at intervals like raindrops cascading down the silvery arc of the light. Top view shown above.
Sterling silver
$975 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this spare and simple piece, it is the rain that travels between the lines, not so much dodging the lightning as doing it the courtesy of sharing space. Each retains its own identity and integrity, yet in concert they produce a near-unstoppable force. It’s a lesson for us: on the value of knowing where the lines are and what our place is in relationship to them — and in knowing how to work, both with the lines themselves and those on the other side, to produce powerful change.
In these days presaging both a literal winter and symbolic sociopolitical one, a time when courage, resistance, and solidarity are required of us in roughly equal proportions, such a lesson becomes a valuable guide.
~ Aji
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