The last day of September, and it’s beautiful.
The breeze has blown the morning’s remnant smoke haze out past the peaks; bright blue skies, near-cloudless only a couple of hours ago, now have thunderheads gathering on all sides. To the east, they’ve already coalesced into a giant slate-blue wall, heavy with the promise of rain, but for now, the sun still shines, so that the green and gold and red of the autumn leaves become jewels in the light.
Days like this remind us just how truly beautiful it is in this place, how living here is medicine in and of itself. This season is a gift on every level, and we are grateful for it.
The feast day will be in full swing in the old village now, one of the opportunities, most years, for the public to be present and enjoy the events of the day. The pandemic makes it impossible for us to attend, except in spirit, but we recognize the gifts and honor the spirits of this season from here. After all, we have the opportunity to be closer to the earth here at home than nearly anyway else . . . and, of course, we have our obligations to it to fulfill daily, as well.
It is a simple truth, that from the heart of the earth our whole world grows . . . and yet, it’s one that outside world so steadfastly refuses to understand. More accurately, perhaps, that world understands it, but simply doesn’t care, preferring instead to maximize its own short-term profits, authority and control at the expense of all else. It’s one of colonialism’s cruelest ironies that the very people who amass material wealth at all costs throughout their lives — those who live by the modern attitude that he who dies with the most toys wins even in the face of the unalterable truth of the much older assertion that you can’t take it with you — are the same people who continually wound the Earth and refuse even minimal steps to heal her, on the theory that they will be dead and won’t care.
Our ways and worldview are the exact opposite.
So are our actions.
We heed the teachings of our ancestors, of elders long since walked on, of the spirit messengers sent to impart wisdom along with warnings that have long since become prophecy in the process of fulfillment.
And we have had many such messengers in recent days: the red-tailed hawk; the flickers; the mountain bluebirds; a solitary hummingbird; a few small but hardy indigenous bees; the smaller butterflies; and, until a day or two ago, one insistent, persistent dragonfly.
That last I have not seen since Wednesday or Thursday. It was one that I have not seen often in years past, color somewhere along the spectrum from gray to black, but with a glow like pure hematite, its wings a blackened silver in the sun. It’s a larger one than the skimmers, not so big as the giant darners, and completely unwilling to settle anywhere to allow me a good look. Instead, it has buzzed past me day after day, at a safe distance but still drifting past my arms or darting around my head. It wants something, wants us to understand something, and it is incumbent upon us to listen.
Today’s featured work embodies these tiny fragile beings of departing summer, wrought in an old traditional style — simple, spare, with minimal stampwork beneath a single stone but with a bold and powerful animating spirit. 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
Part of the disconnect between our worldview and that of the colonial world is its insistence on binaries in all things. To work, it requires a definition of literality that is not merely false but misleading, misdirecting. It’s a way of thinking, and being, that functions as existential propaganda, a disinformation of body and brain and breath in all things. It’s a worldview that sees a precious stone, cut and polished, as a jewel, but cannot see the the same value in its rough state, nor in the soil whence it came; a way of thought that understands corporate pharmaceuticul formulations selling for thousands of dollars a dose as medicine, but cannot see or feel or otherwise perceive the healing power in earth and sky, fire and water, wind and storm and light.
It’s a careless, reckless, nihilistic way of being, and it is killing our world — even our small world here.
Perhaps that is the message Dragonfly has seemed so desperate to impart.
In the meantime, there is work to do, land to ready for winter and protect before the snow flies. We are granted these beautiful fall days as a gift, but also as a reminder of what we need to save.
In that, these days are like these late-season dragonflies jewels — in the light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
