Today is our first day of full self-isolation, insofar as we are not venturing out into the world for any reason. Aside from the occasional need to refill prescriptions and deal with mail, that won’t change for the foreseeable future. For most people, this is fast becoming a burden of staggering proportions.
For us, such isolation is not that far from normal, and indeed, in many respects, it is very welcome.
I don’t expect most folks to understand that; it’s too great a departure from what the outside world deems the norm. But we have always been private, always been fairly self-sufficient when it comes to the baselines for survival. And our traditional practices and lived experiences stand us in good stead now.
Still, we recognize that it will not be the case for most people. And for those who, in recent days, have been deprived of access to jobs and school and child care and the ability to shop when a need or want arises, circumstances have become fraught very fast. In what has been a mind-bogglingly bad four-year period, we are now entering real crisis mode on a near-universal scale.
If ever people needed hope, it is now.
We have no particular words of wisdom to offer, for in truth, there are none: This is a new danger, one the country is singularly ill-prepared now to address, and the stark reality of it is that most of what we will all doing is simply riding it out as best we can until we get to the other side of it . . . if, indeed, there actually is an “other side of it” ahead. It may be that there is none; it is certainly true that the world as we all thought we knew it is changed forever in stark and salient ways.
All we have is the accumulated wisdom of elders and ancestors, of lifeways and hard lived experience, of the knowledge that planning is crucial and preparation key, and that however helpless we feel, we can still do much to ameliorate our individual situations.
We can still find beauty in our world while we do. We can still find hope.
I was reminded of this last night, in the unseasonal warmth that attended the dark. A single moth fluttered around the porch light, arrived far too soon to be with us long. There is rain on the way this afternoon, turning to snow tonight and tomorrow. Such fragile creatures will not survive the return of the cold.
But the very fact that they are here, amid an early spring that has mostly supplanted winter before its time, tells us that there are easier days ahead. It’s possible today to walk out of doors without a coat; the earth is now more green than not; and we have been granted precipitation at a steady pace thus far. We are on track for a strong and early planting season, with the promise of a good growing season and harvest for the first time in years.
Here, it is the wingéd spirits who are harbingers now — meadowlark, already having delivered to us the first day of spring; the grackles, filling the air with their clear and bell-like song; the moths that seek the light; and eventually, those who ride still warmer winds: the hummingbirds, the honeybees, the butterflies, the dragonflies, tiny messengers as heralds of hope, a promise of prosperity to come.
Today’s featured works embody the last of these small emissaries of the spirits, Dragonfly. These works are an informal, not matched but entirely complementary collection in miniature, a set of sorts composed of necklace and coordinating earrings. They are offered separately, for each work can stand entirely on its own. Still, there is more than a passing family resemblance between them, and they work best together (perhaps another lesson for the rest of us). We begin with the necklace, its pendant shown in close-up above — a powerful piece in the colors now washing over our small world, the green of the grass and the illuminated violet blues of the storm. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Messenger of Hope Necklace
In the dark of winter, in the depths of drought, our world needs a messenger of hope. Wings summons one in the shape of the small medicine spirits of summer, this one wrought in silver and stone, here to share the promise of warmer winds and a world reborn. It’s Dragonfly, in the shapes and shades of the flowing waters and flowering earth of summer, body, wings, and antennae all cut freehand from sterling silver and hand-stamped to capture the light. The stampwork, like the body it adorns, evokes a spirit of transformation, wings spread in Art Nouveau’s gracefully flowing lines, body tall and strong in the angular geometry of the Art Deco period to follow. Beneath the head rests an inverted stylized heart; above it, two arched antennae. The head itself is a bright banded cabochon of malachite, the shades of a lush and fertile earth. A small flared bail hand-stamped in a repeating motif of the Sacred Directions holds the pendant securely to a strand of beads consisting of brilliantly banded malachite cubes alternating with short segments of translucent blue-violet iolite, anchored at either end by tiny doughnut rondels of electric blue azurite in malachite. The pendant is 2-1/8″ long, including bail, by 3″ across at the widest point; the malachite cabochon is 1/4″ across; the bead strand is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Necklace coordinates with Medicine Spirits earrings, here. Close-up view of pendant shown at top.
Sterling silver; malachite; iolite; azurite in malachite
$1,075 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this piece — indeed, this whole set — more than I can say, from the rich jewel tones of the shades to the graceful Art Nouveau stylings of form and shape. The latter is reprised from a different angle in the earrings, with stones are the color of the rain. From their description in the Earrings Gallery:
Medicine Spirits Earrings
Medicine spirits fulfill their role as a messenger of hope, here to deliver healing to world wounded by darkness and drought. Wings invokes their shapes and shades with these Earrings, small incarnations of Dragonfly in the colors of water and light. Each wingéd messenger is cut freehand from sterling silver with articulated wings, body, and antennae; the stampwork is the flowing imagery of Art Nouveau wedded to the soaring geometry of the Art Deco period, a moment in art history as transitional and transformational as the dragonflies’ annual metamorphosis. The head of each small spirit is set with a single round cabochon of translucent blue-violet iolite, the shade of the waters atop the arc of the silver summer light. Each hangs from sterling silver wires. Earrings are 1-3/44″ long, excluding wires, by 2-1/8″ across at the widest point; iolite cabochons are 3/16″ across. Earrings coordinate with Messenger of Hope necklace, here.
Sterling silver; iolite
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These earrings do nothing short of dance, an expression of not merely hope but pure joy besides. It’s hard now to imagine that there will be much in the way of joy ahead, at least in the short term, but the message these delicate beings deliver today is that there is joy to be found in the small things, the ordinary things, the things we take so thoroughly for granted that we don’t even see them . . . things like the return of the dragonflies.
They have another lesson to teach us, too, about vulnerability, about courage in the face of great risk and the essential strength beneath the sense of fragility that frightens us so — a strength that is our own, if only we learn to tap it. Consider, for a moment, Dragonfly’s existence: a tiny body, wings as thin as silken thread, at risk not only from ordinary predators but from the forces of storm and season. And yet, each year, they return, braving all manner of wind and rain and other dangers, to find a single sanctuary pond where they can safely lay their eggs.
And so their children survive.
It’s very much a communitarian kind of effort, regardless of whether they possess the thought processes most of humanity, in its infinite hubris, deems necessary to sentience. They migrate in groups, understanding that their chances are better together than alone, and they brave all kinds of conditions to complete their annual migratory journey. And while our own challenges now involve the very opposite of migration, the lessons are the same: We work to keep each other safe and well, to keep each other alive, for our own future, and for our that of children yet unborn.
For there is hope, particularly for them. And there is still a promise of prosperity in the world they will inherit. Our obligation is to see that they are granted that gift.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
