This is the time when life comes at us from all directions.
It’s not just the weather, although that’s a fundamental part of it; it’s also the pace, in a place where spring is the season that lays the groundwork for all of the year. For us, the pressures of that pace are compounded by the effort to finish the house, a task itself complicated by season and weather.
And so we come full circle.
In the 21st Century, we humans persuade ourselves that we control our environment, that we have indeed, as the colonizer’s book would have it, established dominion over the earth.
We humans delude ourselves.
Oh, yes, we can “control” some small aspects of the natural world, those close at hand. We also “control” it, in a sense, in terms of the sheer damage we have done and continue to do, if negligence rather than deliberation can be said to be control. Certainly manipulation; destruction; the killing of the planet.
It has come back to bite us, and that, too comes from all directions: seasons out of season; scorching heat and freezing snows; extended droughts and the famine that attends it; catastrophic storms that bring blizzards, flooding, deadly winds.
And this is the time of year in this place when all combine in one elemental vortex of power and caprice, when the mercury can rise nearly 80 degrees one day, a foot of snow descend the next. It taxes body and spirit alike, pushing us to our limits and beyond just to navigate our daily path without being swept off it by far greater forces than our own will.
And yet . . . even as we are battered by weather and circumstance during these unsettled days, we are also afforded great gifts — and these, too, come from all directions, some arriving on those same tempestuous winds. Longer days, greater light, warmer air; green grass and trees and plant spirits; blossoming flowers and rushing water wending its way down from the peaks; birdsong and pollination; the promise of new growth of the sort that sustains us year-round.
And it is the gifts that served as inspiration for today’s featured work, a pair of earrings that embody the power and path of the blessings that our cosmos, and the spirits who inhabit it, grant us. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
From All Directions Earrings
Sometimes we need protection from the winds that seem to buffet us from all directions. Sometimes, great gifts and blessings arrive on those same winds. Wings captures the dichotomous nature of our journey around the hoop with these earrings, jet-black onyx and silver polished so highly it’s nearly white, that embody the power of the winds and the sacred directions: gifts simultaneously of wild unharnessed power and of shelter from the storm. The settings are representations of the Sacred Directions, those reaches of our world guarded by the winds, that here encompass both cardinal and ordinal points. Each is cut freehand from sterling silver, with the spoke at each cardinal point gently curved on the end to imply the arcing shape of the hoop and impart a sense of motion around it. At the center of each, the vortex: a large round onyx cabochon, like a pool of liquid jet, resting gently in a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver. Settings are 1.75″ high by 1.75″ across; cabochons are .75″ across (dimensions approximate). Earrings are a companion work to Dance of the Whirlwind Spirits, in the Necklaces Gallery.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s difficult in such times, but that is our task: to keep our focus fixed firmly on the gifts, and not on the hardships. The latter make the former all the sweeter, of course, and they have much to teach us, too, but privation and tribulation are rarely the point of our charge to go well through life. We do better to keep both firmly in perspective, being ready for either even as we hope for and celebrate the blessings that sustain us on our path. This is guidance; this is wisdom. Coming full circle, after all, is life itself; it is the path of the hoop.
Because even — perhaps especially — in these difficult days, the same winds capable of bearing adversity are also capable of bringing great gifts . . . and they come from all directions.
~ 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.
