We do not yet have anything approaching “summer,” not as we typically understand the term here. Oh, the rainy season is here already — or, perhaps more accurately, the stormy season, since our monsoonal storms tend to fleeting and often mostly bereft of actual rain — but the temperatures have yet to catch up with the weather.
It neared eighty yesterday, before dropping more than ten degrees in a matter of moments as the clouds moved together overhead and the wind rose to bring us no more than a smattering of drops, but plenty of pollen and dust. Now, nearing midday, we’re only a degree or so removed from the predicted high already, but the clouds are already coalescing, and to the west, a forbidding bank of thunderheads grows larger by the hour.
For the moment, the sun is shining, our world bejeweled and bright. But as we head into the emerald heart of summer, we may find that this year, the trade-off for a green earth is more stark than usual.
We have seen this before, as recently as three or four years ago. Three or four years before that, the temperature barely exceeded seventy for the whole of the summer, a full season of yellow-gray days, chilly and damp. But if forced to choose between warmth and water, it’s no contest, no choice at all, really: If green is the heart of summer, summer is the heart of the year, and it is water that lies at the heart of the earth’s survival here.
Today’s featured work embodies shape and shade and season alike, an old traditional style given new life, held aloft by small summer spirits. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And now, even as I write, the clouds move to obscure the sun’s face. The earth still glows like a green gem, but now with a more muted fire, an inner illumination rather than the artificial spangles of external light. The wall of blue to the west grows increasingly gray; showers are likely not far off now.
And so we can expect this momentary warmth to dissipate yet again, returning only momentarily in the renewed light of day’s end.
And we are still grateful for all of 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.
