Looking at the wide bands of clouds across the morning sky, I would swear that the weather is changing, but the forecast remains unseasonably warm and clear until next Wednesday. That, too, is another facet of climate change, this inability to predict the weather with any accuracy based on current changes in conditions.
So far, the elbow I broke as a child remains a better barometer than even the meteorologists’ high-end computer models.
That elbow is mostly silent this morning, no groan-inducing pain to speak of, so clouds notwithstanding, the day is likely to be safe for out-of-doors work. It is odd, though, to see the world before us now mostly gray, skeletal branches and fields gone the shade of putty, while the mercury rises high enough for us to work without sleeves. Still, such indicators as remain serve as sentinels, an early-warning system of sorts, and in a world so unsettled now, we would do well to heed the evidence they show us.
It seems odd to me, this larger world, one in which people live constantly in fear of the small things, even as they ignore the beast now at the door: spiked walls and criminalizing homelessness in cities that may soon be underwater; alarms and auto-locks for SUVs gorged on the same extractive fuels whose processing now burns up the planet. In the colonial world, notions of “safety” are upended, divorced from real existential threat onto personal proprietary insecurities.
Such shifts, driven by the dominant culture, filter across lines. My own car, old as it is, has a key fob; they have been, as the young people say, a thing for close on three decades now. At the moment, I haven’t transferred my old key ring, a small hand-made African beaded piece in blue and black, with a miigis shell on the front. But for us, keychains are one of the small ways in which we incorporate both art and our natural world into our daily lives, a way of wrapping cold slick electronics in a bit of tradition.
Today’s featured work — more properly, works, plural — falls into this category. Out of the photo shown above, only four remain now, all roughly the same length but of varying circumference, all holding a tiny turquoise nugget fast in the embrace of the wood. Only the bead colors differ: one emerald green, one magenta, two lilac. From their description in the Other Artists: Leatherwork, Antler, and Bone gallery here on the site:
Keep your keys close at hand, secure on one of these unique little keychains by Anespah Bernal Marcus (Taos Pueblo). Made from lengths of cholla cactus, harvested locally, each is thoroughly defanged and smoothed. She then wraps them securely at both ends in tanned leather thongs. One end is attached to the ring with a loop; at the other, a bead channels the thongs into a pair of tassels. Some have a tiny nugget of turquoise embedded in an opening in the cholla. Length, bead color, and nugget availability vary. Lengths range between 3″ and 4″ long, not including tassels (dimensions approximate).
Cholla cactus, leather, plastic beads, turquoise, metal ring
$25 each + shipping, handling, and insurance
These tiny works come from sentinels, too, of a sort: cholla cactus, indigenous to this part of our world, smallish branched bushes armored with spines, their fruition each year heralded by small delicate flowers in shades of pink and purple. The blossoms are make the plant look deceptively fragile, but shielding from first sight the spines that defend it.
In that, they are a bit like our own traditions: at risk from colonialism, yes, and often fragile now as a result, yet a shield that defends our world, and us. Small works such as these, at hand, held and carried in the course of everyday life, reminds us of their power.
~ Aji
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