After a few days of unseasonal highs too near fifty, more ordinary temperatures have returned. The mud, however, remains.
There have always been two things I dislike about spring here, and only two: the high winds; and the rivers of mud. Both are a constant source of irritation and treachery, and in recent years, our winters have been so scant that they have arrived far earlier than the norm.
Until last year, when, for all practical purposes, there was no winter . . . and with no snow to melt, there was no mud.
And we were plunged in a deeper drought than we have seen these last twenty years, bad as they have been. No waters flowed from the mountains through the ditches and streams; the great river’s water level stayed so low as to show the scars of eons past along the banks; the earth remained dry and impossibly hard, impervious to any thought of planting.
And it was a lesson, one we too often forget: Even the inconveniences have the purpose; without them, our world fast grows barren.
Yesterday was battered by vicious cold, the winds shrieking like lost and abandoned spirits until the darkness subsumed their fury. Today, the cold remains, but the winds are somewhat mollified, perhaps by the promise of snow that the forecasters grandly insist is to mark tonight and tomorrow and part of Tuesday, too. And while the fields and the shaded areas nearer the house still bear a frozen blanket, no longer entirely white, the rest of the land shows through in the rich browns of the local earth, shades of sepia and coffee touched here with gold, there with rust, and occasionally ashimmer in the sun with a scattering of native mica and quartzite.
It is the original Earth Mother, our Mother Earth, showing herself just enough to remind us that her gift is, in every season, a mother’s love.
It’s a motif that finds expression in today’s featured work, one that has itself taken on a slightly new form. First created as a pendant, it has been reborn as a necklace, courtesy of the synchronicity and serendipity of life and art. Last week, in the midst of great upheaval otherwise, we were privileged to acquire some hand-made African bone beads — one strand in their original off-white, another varnished in beautiful variegated shades of rich brown. Wings and I looked at the varnished strand, and at each other, and we knew where they were meant to go, and so today the pendant has become a more fully articulated work. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Earth Mother/Mother Earth Necklace
Earth Mother/Mother Earth, two spirits in one: The latter births the former, the former emerges from the very being of the latter. Wings summons this most elemental spirit of the Sacred Feminine into being in this necklace, one to hang beneath the throat and over the heart. She is wrought, freehand, out of sterling silver, arms stretched high above her head to embrace the universe, separated from head and body by delicate ajouré cutwork. She dances, swaying gently, as she emerges from the womb of the earth itself, all red canyons and warm rocky soil beneath a gray and stormy sky; her face is pure golden light, the radiance of sun and moon reflected off the surface of the world. Her body, and that of the earth, is formed from a bold oval cabochon of exquisite picture jasper set into a hand-made, hand-scalloped bezel; her face appears in the form of a spectacularly chatoyant golden-brown tiger’s eye, highly domed and radiating out of a saw-toothed bezel. She hangs suspended from a bail fashioned of wide sterling silver pattern wire molded in a fertile and flowering pattern, through which cascades a strand of hand-made African barrel beads of varnished bone strung on a sterling silver snake chain. Pendant, including bail, hangs 3″ long; pendant only is 2.5″ long by 1-3/16″ across at the widest point; bail is 5/8″ long by 5/16″ across; picture jasper cabochon is 1-3/16″ long by 13/16″ across at the widest point; tiger’s eye cabochon is 1/2″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; bead strand is 20″ long (dimensions approximate). Side view of hand-scalloped bezel shown below. Jointly designed by Aji and Wings.
Sterling silver; picture jasper; tiger’s eye; varnished African bone beads
$1,275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The spirit of this work lies close to my heart, for obvious reasons. But it also rests close to the land here, to our understanding of an indigenous earth. Even those among our various cultures that envision their peoples’ origins among the stars still refer to the Earth as our Mother. It comes from a fundamental understanding of our relationship to the land, not as acreage but as soil, not as property but as dirt, not as a commodity but as the clay that is the very stuff of creation, of the art of humanity and humanity’s art.
In the aspect of this relationship to the earth that might be characterized as “love,” humankind, collectively, has been mostly absent. This is not especially true, of course, of indigenous peoples; our ties to the very dust beneath our feet are too tightly braided to break that easily. But colonial cultures are founded, fundamentally, on a disrespect of the land, a dishonor of the earth, and the vast majority of the planet is now controlled by such systems of society and governance.
To the extent that we ourselves needed reminding, last year’s intensified drought served as a brutal object lesson. This year, as we count down the days until official spring and make ready for the work of warmer winds, we are more mindful than ever of what it means to have, in this instance, a mother’s love — and the depth of our obligation to return it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
