I said in my last post that yesterday would be a difficult day.
I had no idea.
In a week in which we’ve explored the signifiers associated with the color black, a collection of motifs that inescapably includes death and mourning, loss and grief, it has felt, at times, as though we have been bombarded by those particular symbols, and from all directions.
At times like this, it’s difficult to remember that life’s greatest gifts likewise come from all directions.
The week began with a day dedicated to a very particular form of grief, the honoring of those fallen in war. For our peoples, this is a complex and conflicted day: the knowledge that “American war dead” first and most fundamentally were invaders who lost their lives in the cause of genocide against our own people; that our own losses in defense of our homeland and people have never been included in what the country conceives as “war dead”; that even in more modern times, our own warriors gave themselves over to military service in far greater proportion than any other ethnic group, and yet were still denied the vote. And that last denial of a fundamental right is still ongoing in too many places.
On Monday, while the outer world “mourned” American war dead with white sales and barbecues, we spent quiet moments praying for the spirit of one of our own, one we learned only last week had lost his final battle, the one every warrior eventually loses, and had walked on a few weeks ago. Wilson Appa was a Native VietNam veteran, an artist, and a friend, and the realization that we would see him no more in this world was accompanied by a great sense of loss.
That was Monday. We already knew that our workweek was to be bookended by markers of loss, with the memory of another great loss looming on Friday.
Yesterday morning marked the fourth anniversary of the day that Wings’s beloved brother Roy lost his own deeply personal battle with a foe engaged by people the world over: cancer. June third is always a hard day in this household, emotionally and spiritually draining, and as the day wound down, we approached its end with no small sense of relief.
In the final hours of the day, the headlines informed us of yet another loss, this one felt the world over: Muhammad Ali’s final bout had ended, and at the age of 74, he had passed into the world beyond. It was a loss that we both felt acutely, but Wings all the more so for having spent precious hours with the man some years ago.
Wings and I have both met enough famous people in our lifetime not to be particularly impressed by anyone’s celebrity status. Muhammad Ali was different: He was a leader who declined the label, a warrior who refused the weapons, a humanitarian whose interest and purpose lay in doing what he felt was right. He was beloved and reviled simultaneously, hated by many for his “arrogance,” but what such people failed to realize is that Muhammad Ali was among the most humble of men. He possessed — lived — humility where it counted: in the choices he made from one moment to the next, according to the dictates of his conscience. If you read what the man said, one word repeats itself over and over: conscience. That is a most difficult and disciplined praxis, and the brash and beautiful young boxer from Louisville lived it.
So when Muhammad Ali visited Taos Pueblo more than a decade and a half ago, Wings was eager to meet this man who had done so much for his own people, people whose own battles, whose struggle to survive was so closely related to our own (one whose is, in fact, my own as well, given my own ethnicity). Wings was prouder still to be the one who guided the man the world knew as The Greatest on his visit to the Pueblo, giving the chance to share his own culture with a man he’d admired his entire life. I wrote about that visit here a year and a half ago, at the time of Muhammad Ali’s 73rd birthday. And so last night, when word came that The Greatest had walked on, thence to fight in the world beyond this one, we felt the loss acutely here.
At the end of a week that has etched a sense of loss deeply into our memories and souls, it’s time to look to that which renews our spirits to continue our own journey around the hoop.
Today’s featured work was always going to be the one I posted on this day. Tomorrow, we’ll feature something all new that nonetheless picks up on the week’s themes. But this item has been scheduled for a week and more, even without foreknowledge of the sort of world this weekend would bring. On this morning, when the sun washes over the land with brilliant white light, while the world yet seems cold and dark in the absence of too many who were a part of our lives, it’s time for us to bring these oppositional elements together within our own spirits. The symbolism of today’s featured work, a simple pair of earrings, provides clues to a way. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
From All Directions Earrings
Sometimes we need protection from the winds that seem to buffet us from all directions. Sometimes, great gifts and blessings arrive on those same winds. Wings captures the dichotomous nature of our journey around the hoop with these earrings, jet-black onyx and silver polished so highly it’s nearly white, that embody the power of the winds and the sacred directions: gifts simultaneously of wild unharnessed power and of shelter from the storm. The settings are representations of the Sacred Directions, those reaches of our world guarded by the winds, that here encompass both cardinal and ordinal points. Each is cut freehand from sterling silver, with the spoke at each cardinal point gently curved on the end to imply the arcing shape of the hoop and impart a sense of motion around it. At the center of each, the vortex: a large round onyx cabochon, like a pool of liquid jet, resting gently in a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver. Settings are 1.75″ high by 1.75″ across; cabochons are .75″ across (dimensions approximate). Earrings are a companion work to Dance of the Whirlwind Spirits, in the Necklaces Gallery.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a lesson for times like this when we are beset by pain and grief, when loss seems to come to us literally from all directions. It’s a reminder that we are peoples of emergence, who have come from the center of all things to stand strong in the storm, to walk the hoop amidst the winds, whatever they bring — and that the same winds that bring the storm also bring life’s greatest gifts.
From all directions.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
