A still and silent dawn, and a world that smells of rain.
We awakened to such a world this morning. While the dominant culture is busy trying to control daylight itself, our eyes are on the clouds, our ears attuned to the winds. We need rain, and desperately, and this morning’s air was heavy with its scent, if not with the drops themselves.
As has become usual these days, the forecast was entirely wrong, requiring its readjustment seemingly every hour by last night. Today, it holds out little hope of anything, but the radar map says otherwise, and so — for the moment — do the skies. The lack of wind is a welcome respite, but we need a little: just enough to blow the storm to us; not enough to blow it beyond this place entirely.
For now, the clouds surround us, and hope comes from all directions.
In other words, it’s a perfect day here for the companion piece to yesterday’s featured work. It’s a pair of earrings designed to complement the necklace highlighted then in this space — not intended to be a perfect match, but able both to coordinate and to stand on their own. 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
We have spent the week just past doing battle with the winds, our bodies buffeted and spirits battered by the gale. On this day, though, we find ourselves inviting their return, at least in more moderate form: just enough to carry the storm, now hovering on all sides, directly overhead to be delivered of its burden.
For now, we can do little but wait. We watch the clouds that surround us, and find hope in their presence.
Because if there’s one thing the wind and weather teach us, especially now, it’s the value of hope.
~ Aji
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