I’m tempted to say that this is just another day here, but it wouldn’t be true, for two reasons: First, there’s always the need to push back on the invasive colonial narrative and intrusions; and second, this is midsummer, which means that every day is special, or should be.
Here, this is the rainy season, and these are days of an elemental medicine.
It’s a time of opposing extremes, summer in this place, all the fire of the hottest sun dancing with the ice-cold chill of an afternoon rain. We got plenty of the former yesterday and only a few moments of the latter, but already the clouds are climbing high in a sunny blue sky over the eastern peaks, puffy white towers above slate-gray bases already heavy with water. And this year, we are fortunate enough to have no parade invading and occupying the road past our home, so we are able to work without interruption while we wait to see what the weather decides.
Meanwhile, there is always the work. In that respect, this is a very ordinary day indeed, for that never changes; there are always our obligations to the earth, to the ancestors, to our ways, to future generations. The medicine of this season reminds us that those relationships run both ways: We are responsible to the elemental powers and spirits, and they in turn help us.
Today’s featured work embodies two such forces in spectacularly bold and mysterious form. It’s a pair of earrings in stormy blues and spiraling copper flame, long, dangling, dancing in the light. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Storm and Fire Earrings
Summer is the season of storm and fire, of cobalt clouds and molten copper sunsets. Wings summons them all into a vortex of color and spirit with these dangling earrings. Each is built around a composite focal cabochon of brilliant blue lapis lazuli and shimmering strands of copper webbing. Each is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then adorned with a hand-coiled pendant polished copper, glowing like a whirlwind lit from within. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) by 5/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1.5″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; coiled copper pendants are 1/4″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli and copper composite; copper
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As I write, the mercury rises, the temperature growing fiery and oppressive. But as I write, too, the clouds are coalescing to the east, becoming a marbled matrix of dark blues webbed here and there with the light.
It is, in fact, a very ordinary day at the middle of summer.
And ordinary days now, here, are days of an elemental medicine.
~ 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.
