Early this morning, I saw a few small streaks of white cloud above Lobo Peak, the only visible. marks in the expanse of lapis sky. Now, there is a gray haze to the southwest, but that’s not cloud; it’s the inversion layer caused by bitterly cold air pressing down on the smoke from thousands of woodstoves and fireplaces in town.
It’s another clear cold day, and while we’re in the early stages of a mild warm-up, we’re unlikely to have any more precipitation for a while.
Unfortunately, probably for a good long while.
No, the storms here are going to be of an entirely metaphorical sort now: at bottom, colonialism, and its immediate offspring of capitalist horrors and the long-term deadly destruction of climate catastrophe. In the nearer term, there remains the pandemic, its continued existence owed to all three dynamics, and it’s looking as though we now will never escape the reach of that particular vortex.
In the middle term, there is worry about more mundane matters, but matters no less close to the question of survival: drought; water availability; the chances for irrigation and planting and cultivation, never mind looking ahead to harvest; and, of course, that newly urgent and close threat, wildfire. We are preparing ourselves for a season of new horrors, even as we work to prevent their birth and cultivate the land’s renewal and rebirth.
The great risk now is that on all fronts, are circumstances are so tenuous, so fragile, that the smallest breeze can turn tornadic, the smallest spark an all-consuming conflagration, in the beat of a bird’s wing. And yet, as our peoples have always known, storm and fire both are essential to the world’s well-being, and our own: The storm cleanses, but so does the fire.
The key lies in understanding both, honoring both, without the hubris that leads us to believe that we can control such elemental forces. It’s not about fear, not really, but a fundamental, essential respect, about understanding that we can, with humility, make use of both to keep the Earth in balance and our lives and ways with it. There is healing in the spiral of storm and fire alike, but we are required to engage with both properly, something the colonial world continually spurns in favor of an iron control and exploitative profit.
Today’s featured work embodies this twinned spiral of power and medicine. It’s a pair of earrings wrought in the shades and shapes of this healing vortex, the blues of sky and water dancing with the flame-hued shimmer of copper. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Storm and Fire Earrings
Summer is the season of storm and fire, of cobalt clouds and molten copper sunsets. Wings summons them all into a vortex of color and spirit with these dangling earrings. Each is built around a composite focal cabochon of brilliant blue lapis lazuli and shimmering strands of copper webbing. Each is set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, then adorned with a hand-coiled pendant polished copper, glowing like a whirlwind lit from within. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) by 5/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1.5″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; coiled copper pendants are 1/4″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli and copper composite; copper
$575 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s rare that Wings works with composite cabochons; he vastly prefers the beauty and power of natural gemstones. But every once in a while, one comes along — or in this case, a pair — of such extraordinary depth of color and radiant intensity that he can’t resist making an exception. Such was the case with this pair, combining the marbled cobalt of the storm with the fiery gleam of burnished copper, as though both elements had agreed upon a mystical union while still retaining their own integrity and identity.
It’s an otherworldly proposition, or so it would seem, and yet we know that under the right conditions (or, sadly more often, the wrong ones), fire can freeze and water can burst into flame. So it is with this pair, each with its own radiant vortex hanging suspended from the stones: ethereal, often ephemeral, medicinal, a healing in the spiral of storm and fire.
We need some of that medicine, and that power, now.
~ 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.
