Today is a special day in this space for two reasons: It’s the eighth anniversary of this blog’s launch (and with it, the revamping of our Web site); and it’s Wings’s birthday. The latter, of course, is the marker that matters, but it’s a nice coincidence.
It also feels like the day when we finally get down to the business of summer. Not in any formal sense, of course; it’s simply that July serves as a midpoint of sorts between the bookends to the school year, and most of us grew up thinking of July as something magic. In our communities, fireworks are a childhood delight, even if we do not celebrate the day around which they are built.
And even if there should be no fireworks any longer anyway, given the nature of this twelve-hundred-year drought.
As it happens, the county has already, and recklessly, lifted its fireworks ban. There still will not, apparently, be a town show for the fourth, and for that, at least, we are grateful. Yes, the earth here has received a good supply of rain over the last week and a half, but to reopen closed lands and permit the use of objects that ignite is to misunderstand the nature of drought in this place entirely. Even now, as the thunderheads tower above us on all sides, preparatory to a possible monsoonal shower or more later today and throughout the weeks to come, we have not lifted our own precautionary measures.
This world is too fragile, too brittle for human carelessness.
But it’s become abundantly clear, locally and on a national scale, that the colonial world has lost its way entirely — worse, that it has not a single shred of an idea of how to go forward now that the beams and struts of the world it thought it knew have been summarily toppled and broken beyond salvage. It’s a problem with a worldview that fundamentally seeks authority and control over every aspect of existence, one that sees everything (and everyone) else as commodities to be used for force and profit, then cast aside when they are spent. It’s a way of being that deludes itself into believing that it controls even the elements, and now, as its authorities attempt to crush what they view as lesser beings, those who have bought into the system their whole lives find themselves tossed about in the storm they have helped to create.
I much prefer our way, one that actively refuses to center ourselves in the broader world we inhabit, one that sees earth and sky, wind and water, storm and light, trees and plants and animals as relatives to be cared for and loved, not as objects of consumption to be used and abandoned. Now, with the strongest, richest nation-state in such deadly turmoil in the midst of real-time climate collapse, the whole world must grapple with the problem of reckoning a way when the current path has failed so utterly.
This task, and our traditional ways of fulfilling it, inform Wings’s work routinely now. At our age, we are acutely aware of just how little time is left to save what the colonial world has always treated as an endless and eternal supply chain for its wants and desires. And so, hands guided by Spirit, he uses his work not just to adorn and to heal, but also to teach a world seemingly unwilling to listen to anything not presented in pretty wrapping. The trio of works that this week’s Friday Feature comprises accomplish all three tasks.
All three of today’s featured works are found in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site. We begin with the one shown above, we also happens to be the most recent — a reminder that some things are not given to us to know, and that instead of seeking that which cannot be had, we should be focusing our work on the medicine they bring. From its description:
Which Way the Rain Falls Cuff Bracelet
It is not given to us to know which way the rain falls, but the spirits show us how to put its gifts to use. With this cuff, Wings calls the clouds and the rain into a circle studded with the symbology of guiding spirits and illuminating forces. Wrought of heavy-gauge sterling silver triangle wire, the entire length of the band is stamped freehand on each angled side in a matched repeating pattern: a lodge symbol above a medicine motif, which together create a perfectly illustrated band of clouds and falling rain. The very apex of the band is also stamped down its entire length in tiny notched crescents, echoing the oppositional crescents bordering the inner band, a strand edged by the light of the moon. The cuff’s ends are beveled y hand, hammered flat and stamped with directional arrows beneath arcs of flowering medicine, a reminder that the rain comes and goes a it will, but it brings power and healing with it. Cuff is 6″ long by 3/8″ across on each of its three sides (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver
$1,125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The message of this piece is especially apt now, in this long-awaited rainy season that we had good reason to believe would not appear. We hoped, we prayed, but we had no assurance; indeed, all indicators were to the contrary. And yet, we continued the work.
Sometimes faith is helpful. More to the point, it’s best to be ready for possibilities.
Even so, in a world as wounded as this one, it’s hard to know which way to go. Our usual guideposts are gone. The second of today’s featured works is equal part plea and leap of faith, wrought in a form and shape that embodies guidance and hints at abundance. From its description:
Show Us the Way Cuff Bracelet
The Eye of Spirit is a symbol of guidance, a signifier of the spirits who daily show us the way to a life well lived. Wings honors their image, and their aid, with this old-style silver cuff, saw-cut freehand in the shape of an arrow and stamped from end to end in traditional motifs. Its slender form is summoned from heavy nine-gauge sterling silver, with arrowhead point, narrowed shaft, and feathered fletching all hewn by hand from the metal using the filament-thin blade of a jeweler’s saw. Wings uses a stylized triangle with a concave base, paired at the open ends to form the Eyes, repeated down the entire upper surface of the band; tiny old-style directional arrows trace the inner band. Each impossibly narrow edge is likewise stamped from end to end, with arrowhead points on one side and linked crescent moons down the other. The blade-sharp tip of the arrowhead and the fletched feathers at the opposite end are both stamped in layers of radiant points, underscoring the animating spirit of direction and path. Cuff is 6″ long by 1/4″ wide along the shaft, with the arrowhead 3/8″ wide at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$1,175 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the freehand cutwork on this one, labor-intensive but beautifully spare and elegant. But the aspect of it that charms my spirit most is the way the wholly-recognizeable arrowhead and shaft also resemble that local signifier of prosperity and abundance, the Serpent. In my own people’s way, Snake has spiritual significance in a couple of forms, including the rattle at its tail, and if you’ve ever seen a rattler shaking its tail, as we both have, the fletched “feathers” bear a marked resemblance to its music.
July is, after all, a month of abundance traditionally of rain, of green, of growth, of sustenance.
The third and final of today’s featured works echoes the same motifs and meanings as the other two, but in what is perhaps a more spiritually-direct way. It’s also the one that most directly embodies today’s title. From its description:
Reckoning Cuff Bracelet
Reckoning our world by the elemental spirits is how we know both our place in it and the path ahead. With this cuff, Wings places the illuminating power of such spirits squarely at the center of traditional symbols of guidance and direction. At the center sits a triptych of visionary power, three Eyes of Spirit in one, flanked by elongated, hand-wrought directional arrows pointing toward the band’s ends and thus, inward toward each other around the hoop. He honors the four winds and the sacred directions by way of diagonally angled lines scored freehand all the way around each side of the heavy half-round wire band, and with a quartet of tiny sacred hoops at either end. The scoremarks wrap all the way around the inner band, between smaller directional arrows and echoing lines of hoops. Each edge of the band is traced with a repeating pattern of flowing-water motifs, drawing together the powers of wind and water and light in a single cosmically-oriented arc. Cuff is 6″ long by 5/16″ across on the underside (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver
$1,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The deep stampwork on this cuff and its clean lines are a throwback to old styles of Indigenous silverwork, one in which the patterns are simple, spare, and deeply defined. It makes for a bold look, and yet a subtle one as well, all ranged around a smoothly comfortable band. Sometimes we need the bold reminders, but they don’t always need to cause constant discomfort. If we are living our lives in the way that our traditions define as “well,” the path may not be easy, but we should feel mostly at home upon it.
Of course, the state of the colonial world is one of virtually nothing but discomfort now — worse, of degeneracy and danger, of destruction, disintegration, and ultimately, death. Our ways are different: They value life, eternal and unbroken, a hoop that links the time before time with all of the generations as yet unborn. It’s why we prize a world in health and harmony, for it will be needed by our grandchildren’s grandchildren, and far beyond.
That makes reckoning a way of survival a moral imperative now. It’s a physical imperative, too. On this day of markers for us, these truths renew our commitment to the way, and to the work.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
