Our world is on fire.
I mean it globally and locally, literally and metaphorically. Here, we have just hit the century mark — one hundred degrees; a high we virtually never reach here — and the air has the feel of ash about it. This morning, we had to drive to the open lands west of here, all desert scrub and sage, no trees, because there is no way to bring in the water. And from there, we could see the smoke of a fire rising from the valley below, on the south side of town.
Meanwhile, the wider world burns in more ways that we can count: climate change, drought, heatwaves, wildfire, flooding, sea rise, pandemic, genocide, racial violence, lynchings, and a thousand and one other conflagrations large and small, most layable directly at colonialism’s door.
Some of it will have to be allowed to burn; colonialism is irredeemable, and mote of its harms are by now irrecoverable. But in the process, we have to find a way tame the flames and allow the world to heal. On the most fundamental level, it feels as though generations of climatic violence have separated the elemental forces from each other, isolated them and starved them of community as surely as colonialism has done to us, so that they are now rewired into permanent battle mode.
But we cannot put all the fires out, not entirely. We need to fan the flames of love, allow them to burn and grow and purify again, to rebuild our own relationships with and love for the earth. By doing so, we rebuild the love between land and sky, the love between fire and rain, and allow them to come together as one again.
Colonial societies like this one don’t tend to think much of our natural world in such terms — indeed, they mostly don’t tend to think much of our natural world at all, which spawns the capitalistic dismissiveness that has brought us all to this pass. But our ways our different, and our traditions are rife with old stories that tell of elemental spirits and otherworldly who fall in love — with each other, with more mortal beings like ourselves who are often out of reach. Some of our stories tell of various birds, among them the crane who lent me its name, who likewise lent their songs to young human lovers, the better help them find and keep their own true loves. I should know; in our early years together, I bought a crane flute for Wings, who has always played the traditional red cedar Indigenous flute.
And so the courting flute holds a time-honored place in multiple Indigenous traditions here. It’s a tradition, too, that found its way into one of Wings’s subseries among The Coiled Power Collections. From its description in that section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Courting Flute Coil Bracelet
The courting flute is a traditional Native red cedar flute, carved and painted at the end in the form and shape of a bird’s head. A young man who wishes to court a young woman will announce his attentions publicly by serenading her from outside her lodge, giving her an opportunity to respond, but from a respectful distance. Here, Wings pays homage to the cranes and woodpeckers and other birds whose song the courting flute borrows with a spiraling melody of coppery reds. At the center are faceted round orbs of smoky quartz flanked by fiery amber that flows, lava-like, into segments of round blood-red jasper beads. Each length of jasper ends in more smoky quartz, flanked at either end by amber. Toward either end, tiny nuggets of soft red branch coral terminate in old-style faceted copper barrel beads. Beads are strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit virtually any wrist. Jointly designed by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; red jasper; smoky quartz; amber; branch coral; copper
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Just as its real-life counterpart sends up a spiral of song to fan the flames of love in a suitor’s spirit, so, too, does this work coil in a spiral of fiery jewels, sufficient to melt the iciest heart.The jasper is blood red, lit here and there with pale gold; the amber and coral are fire itself; the quartz refracts the light drifting through the smoke; and the tiny copper barrels that anchor either end resemble drops of rain lit with that smoky light.
It’s a beautiful piece, one that has always held special resonance for me, both for the materials of which it is formed and for the traditions it represents. Such traditions are what our world needs now.
At some point, there has to be a reckoning, but beyond that, there has to be love. Without both, the world is doomed, and we with it. But if we can coax the right flames into being again, with jewels, with song, with a healed earth that reignites love between fire and rain and reunites them in proper balance?
Perhaps there’s a chance for us all yet.
~ 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.
