Today is a perfect example of the summer monsoon season here: skies brilliantly blue and utterly cloudless this morning, piled high with white thunderheads by midday, and now blanketed with the violet-tinged slate of the impending storm.
Of course, it could be like yesterday, no more than a few quick drops as it spins past to the south, or a sudden sharp cloudburst gone almost before it’s here — or we could be granted the gift of a heavy, soaking rain. The latter, of course, is always the goal, but we’ll take what we can get; too many of our trees and shrubs and wild plants have not revived after three years of deepening drought.
For now, though, the clouds have broken the heat, and the rising wind is at work on the humidity, turning what only moments go was a day slightly uncomfortably hot into something far more pleasant, all the sharp bright edges rounded off beneath the subtly dark and low-hanging clouds. Today, as with so many recent days, we have treated to the mysterious spectacle of mammatus clouds, usually more of a rarity here, but they are the direct result of our new patterns of temperature and weather and wind: a world now of braided skies, rich blues and fluffy, lacy bands of white blazing a path before the storm.
Today’s featured work, a personal favorite, embodies these skies — before, during, and after the storm. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Braided Skies Ring
This is a land of braided skies, of a blue expanse bound up with the medicine of cloud and storm and light. Wings sets the clouds atop the light with this ring, a band of bands and braids set with lacy lines of pale blue. The bezel sits atop a wide band of heavy sterling silver pattern wire, scored rows of peaks and valleys standing out in sharp relief, adorned at intervals with Art Deco-like geometric crossed bands woven like a braid of sweetgrass. The bezel is set atop an extended backing, flaring beyond its edges even as it follows it lines perfectly. The focal cabochon is a stunning specimen of blue lace agate,, lightly domed and twice-banded across the center with cloud-like formations, atmospheric rings around a planet and a gathering storm in the lower atmosphere. The band is 1/4″ across; the setting is 1/2″ across; the blue lace agate cabochon is 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; blue lace agate
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the old Art Deco feel of this design: a band wrought in a bold geometry, topped with a much more delicate, yet still powerful set of jeweled bands in the stone. It really does look like our skies here, braided with clouds and light, on sunny day and in heavy weather alike.
And that, of course, is part of the essential, elemental magic of summer here: the arcs and bands of shimmering light, sometimes silver, sometimes gold, sometimes manifest, very literally, in all the colors of the rainbow.
We may be granted a rainbow yet today. What is sure is that the light is already its own medicine. It’s visible out the southwest windows, a silvery shimmer marking the lines of the sky ahead of the storm’s arrival, a reminder, perhaps, that there is always a way forward. Sometimes it requires us to wait until the rain has passed; sometime we are forced to make our way through the heaviest of weather.
But the light and the clouds together form their own promise, their own guideposts, their own illumination for the road ahead. At this moment, they are conspiring with the blues of the sky, blazing a path before the storm, and reassuring us that whatever comes, it will show us a good way forward.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
