Today feels like September: sunny, bright, just that slightest bit too hot for fall, yet so clear the air wields a scalpel’s edge. There is precious little haze this morning, but precious few clouds, too, the turquoise sky matrixed only around the horizon, and with only the thinnest webwork of puffy white strands.
On this morning, it is almost — almost — possible to believe that the world is normal.
But the masks lie on the table, and the hand sanitizer and extra cleansers are on the shelf. There will be no spur-of-the-moment errands, because we make an effort to minimize exposure, both our own, and other people’s. The fields are still mostly brown, no hay standing tall and awaiting a final cut; the trees on all sides are patched with gold now, and most of the gardens’ growth remains stunted by drought. And I continue to unsubscribe, repeatedly, from the political e-mails that flood my inbox in a tsunami of spam, because I have neither time nor patience any longer, and certainly no money. They have failed us [much more than] once too often, and we direct our efforts now toward personal support and mutual aid.
That is, of course, a feature of colonialism and not a bug: this setting up of a structure that encourages, even forces, a psychological dependency upon anointed “leaders” even as it removes any possibility of self-sufficiency, and any possibility of systemic and structural support, too. Colonialism is a system design, indeed, depends upon, the unraveling of community, of breaking apart families and clans and whole cultures, unbraiding the strands that have kept them whole for time on an epochal scale. We have been reaping that whirlwind for five hundred years and more, and after the wholesale abandonment by everyone these last few, even as they try to command our own performance, this is the year when we have finally said Enough.
We have always lived our lives with the land here: Our calendar is dictated by weather and season rather than some laminated chart on a wall. We know who comes and goes, which spirits attend at what time, and when they are here out of their normal patterns. We know what the earth and her children here need, even if it is not always in our power to provide it, and we chart our daily path by the clouds and the stars in the sky.
Tonight will be the full moon, and perhaps we shall even see it rise, if these daylight hours’ clarity is any indication. Between now and then, there is much work to be done, for earth and people alike, and we make our way along this path united, braided together like a sweetgrass sky.
It’s a notion that finds expression in today’s featured work — one of Wings’s newest, completed only days ago, one bearing all the hallmarks of the work of a master, and all the indigo glow of a genuine gem. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Sweetgrass Sky Cuff Bracelet
We live beneath the braided hoop of a sweetgrass sky, flowering blue and scented with the smoke from our prayers. Wings summons the symbolism of them all into a hoop of Skystone and silver with this cuff, an extraordinary arc of paired and braided sterling pattern wire set with an outsized cabochon of finely webbed turquoise in the embrace of ingot blossoms created by hand. The band is formed by two separate strands of heavy-gauge pattern wire in a scored design with a geometric Art Deco feel, the lines criss-crossed with ribbons that create a braided effect. The strands are soldered together at either end, then gently spread apart by hand to create the separation at center that holds the focal setting in perfect balance. The cabochon is a specimen of ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise of incredible size, the inky matrix underlit with faints hints of red webbing throughout. It rests in a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, flowering at top and bottom like the buds of the fresh sweetgrass plant — four hand-made sterling silver ingot blossoms, for a total of eight blooms altogether. Band is 6″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest (center) point; each strand of the band is 5/16″ across; focal setting is 1-7/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across; cabochon is 1-1/8″ long by 7/8″ across; ingot stars are each 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise
$1,675 + shipping, handling and insurance
It is a powerful piece, one that reminds me, in such troubled times, to seek grounding in the old ways. Sweetgrass is one of our sacred medicines, a fragrant plant of slender stalks and blossoms like small jewels, dried and braided like our hair. Its smoke, when burned, is cleansing, purifying, healing, a gentle tendril of the scent of the spirits.
This cuff called it instantly to mind.
Part of it is the braiding of the band, of course, an easy association for silver strands that resemble the silvered green braids of the medicine itself. Part of it is the hand-made blossoms that flower from top and bottom, tiny petals shimmering near-white in the light. But part of it, too is that stone, a naturally braided web in the colors of the sky that shelters us now.
Today’s sky may not mean much in the larger scheme of things: accelerating climate change, deepening drought, intensifying pandemic, rising fascism. But for the moment, it feels like a view of what “normalcy” might look like, if not now, then someday, at least.
This world has lost too much to recover what it thought it had, but then again, it was never about possession, although most never understood that. It has always been about the connections, the ties, the links not only to community, but to the earth that gives us life, that holds us braided together beneath a sweetgrass sky.
That’s worth the fight, and the work.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
