This day is one of our least favorite of the whole year.
Wings and I resist organized, structural attempts to control the nature of time and day, light and season; such efforts are always doomed to fail, no matter how much we try to delude ourselves otherwise.
It’s now science: Researchers have begun to investigate the effects of Daylight Savings Time on the humans who actually live under its effort to manipulate hours and sunlight, and have discovered that it simply doesn’t work. More, it’s harmful — heart attacks jump a full 25 % on the Monday following the time change, and the rate of occurrence of other cardiovascular events such as strokes are elevated, too. Judges impose harsher sentences in the days following the time change. The entire world is out of joint and out of sync, and the alleged original purpose of the time change, wartime energy conservation, has been shown to be nonexistent. Of course, it was never really about conservation, but about money, and still is. And, as with any endeavor that elevates commercial profit over the world’s well-being, it does far more harm than good.
For us, it’s meaningless except insofar as the rest of the world around us adheres to it, and thus it still manages to disrupt our days. But in the moments that we are here on the land, we live by the reckoning of the sky, by the hours of light and lack thereof, by the appearance and position of sun and moon and stars. Not since childhood have been days been so thoroughly lived by the four corners of the sky, but in the years that we have shared our lives together in this place, sky and light and weather and season are lodestones, guideposts, the very road itself we walk.
It is a way of living that is much easier on the spirit.
It is also a way of living that inspired the name of today’s featured work. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Four Corners of the Sky Ring
In some traditions, the people reckon their world by the four corners of the sky. Here, Wings has captured the image of such a world in microcosm: the hoop of the world holding up a perfect turquoise square of Southwest sky. The band is formed of two elegant strands of solid sterling silver triangle wire, soldered seamlessly together. At the center of the band, the bezel flares into a flat setting cut freehand in a square with softly rounded edges. The stone, cut and filed into a slightly smaller square, is left with a freeform surface that hints at the rolling movement of the heavens, traced with bits of black and gold-colored webbing like fine wisps of thundercloud. The band is 3/8″ wide; the setting, 1/4″ square; the stone, 3/8″ square (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
On this day, the sky is harder to read: clouds simultaneously high and lowering, thin and clearing in some areas, violet gray in others. The air feels soft, as though rain is in the offing, but none will fall on this day, nor on any other in the long-range forecast. Still, with official spring just over a week away, the sky, like the meadowlark on the east fence, begs to differ: Spring is here, and with it warmer winds and longer light. The name of the hour the outside world chooses to impose on it at any given moment matters not in the slightest. This day will be longer than the last, and tomorrow’s will be longer than this, and they will all be reckoned, as they have since the dawn of time, by the four corners of the sky.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
