Perhaps predictably, there turned out to be little substance to the much-vaunted meteorological forecast of snow: a dusting, nothing more. Even so, the sky is as white as the ground this morning, dawn amounting to nothing more than a lightening in hue of the veil that covers the world.
Fog.
There was a time, not so very long ago, when fog was unheard-of at this time of year, but none of the old patterns hold any longer.
The gray will clear in a few hours, forced out through the eastern peaks at the head of a rising wind. The mercury will drop accordingly, and we will return shortly to the dangerous wind chills that have marked recent days. And still, the hours of available light will shrink, dark descending ever more rapidly for another two weeks before we settle down to the real business of winter.
We have no fear of the dark, nor of the storm, but these abbreviated hours of the day force us to fill every moment with activity. There is never enough time to do all that needs to be done between dawn and dusk. We need to find a mechanism for storing up the light.
Today’s featured work seems, in its way, to just that, although that is not its primary purpose. From its description in the Other Artists: Pottery gallery here on the site:
Keep your seeds safe and dry in this perfectly-shaped little seed pot by Benito Romero (Taos Pueblo). Great for storage in the cold months, and useful for dispensing seeds during planting season. Made of the Pueblo’s local micaceous clay; 3″ high by 3.5″ across at widest point (dimensions approximate). Side view shown at top.
Micaceous clay
$65 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this instance, the light is stored in the very substance of the vessel, mica in the native clay that catches, holds, and refracts the rays of the sun. But it functions on a deeper, less tangible level, too: It is, in a very real sense, a holder of the light itself, of the seeds that will grow into plants tall and strong, whose leaves will catch the literal light and, through the seeming magic of the process we call photosynthesis, generate the oxygen that allows our equally literal survival.
It seems a tall order for such a modestly mundane item, a small seed pot vessel nearly spherical in shape, wrought of the very earth beneath our feet with a single tiny opening at the top. And yet, that is how our world works, with life itself contingent upon the well-being and balance of all of our fellow spirits, independent of and interdependent upon each other for survival.
For this day, perhaps, it’s a lesson of another sort, too. Work must get done, of course. But there will always be more work, and there will never be enough hours in the day. For the few we are granted now, we should take a moment here and there to appreciate them, storing up the light in our own memories, too.
~ Aji
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