Our world here exists suddenly out of season, a week that should have been filled with monsoonal bone-dry on all days save one thus far. That could change tomorrow, but the forecast renders such chances doubtful; next week, however, predicts a return to more our more usual August weather.
It is, perhaps, entirely predictable, a cosmic joke at human expense, a trick played upon this place by the spirits personified by sacred clowns. For while this week sees much preparation here, it is next week that the people’s pilgrimage begins. The very word carries with it connotations of hardship, of obstacles laid across an already-difficult path. That it occurs during the waning days of the raining season is hardship enough.
For now, though, the earth here has grown dry and arid, the squash leaves in the garden yellowing in the course of a single day. Only the smallest amount of water wets the bottom of the pond, and if the rains do not return soon, the hay, now high in the fields, risks burning.
And still, the leaves turn early, the first shift from green to gold having occurred in the last days of July this year.
The earth is at this moment in the throes of a cosmic shift, a process of transformation that is both a reacting and a becoming, a pilgrimage of her own along a path of fault lines that climate change has opened in her being. Who and what will survive it is still unknown to us, a mystery perhaps not fully revealed even ot more powerful spirits. What we can say with certainty is that adaptation is required, and so is a new appreciation for the gifts that we are given, whether in their usual season or not.
And so, once again, we find ourselves praying for a world of the rain.
It is perhaps fitting, then, that today’s featured work should be one with the ability to call to the rain, and to the earth and her spirits: to call, to sing, to beat in time with our mother’s own heartbeat. From its description in the Other Artists: Drums gallery here on the site:
“Sacred Hoop” patterns accent Grandmother Turtle’s shell and water emanates from her feet on small hand drum. Dual-sided with a twisted hide handle, the drum comes with a traditional beater and is sized for both adults and children. Drum by Elk Good Water (Taos Pueblo); artwork by his wife, Dolly Concha (Zuni Pueblo).
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There is no need to revisit the story of Grandmother Turtle in detail here; those who read this space regularly will already of some of our peoples’ stories, in which she saved the First People by bearing them upon the world on her back. She is a water spirit, true, but an earth spirit as well, one comfortable on land or below the surface of the waters.
In this iteration, she bears hoops within hoops, spokes and circles alike arrayed to each of the Sacred Directions, cardinal and ordinal both. Her body rests across a star, one that likewise extends to the points of the compass and the winds, all above a sky blue expanse that looks like nothing so much as the waters themselves. But it is her limbs that bring the rain: long wavy cascades of rain emerging from each small foot to touch the edges of the world she inhabits.
And, of course, whomever holds her has the ability to play, to sing, to pray to the world and the waters, to her spirit and to the storm.
Perhaps that person will pray for a return, at least for now, to a world of the rain.
~ Aji
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