The forecast says rain, but the clouds, though moving inward, remain noncommittal.
It was still ninety-five degrees after 6 PM last night, all fiery sun and hot orange light. Our world is as bright, and as baked, as the micaceous clay vessels that here would traditionally have hauled and held our water.
But for the moment, at least on our land, there is no water to be had — not, certainly, of the sort that flows down from the mountains through the ditches to feed the land. It is a reminder that high desert though it may be, this bit of earth at the end of The Dragon’s Tail is still desert . . . and we are still caught in the throes of a record drought.
Two days ago, our first tree began to turn for fall: the largest of the weeping willows on the north side of the land. That day, it sported a patch of leaves in a new color on its southwest side, big, bold, and bright gold. Today, it is our three weeping willows on the west side, our trio of lush trees, normally among the last to turn for the season. The third week of July, and overnight, they have begun to go gold from the inside out.
Meanwhile, the clouds caper and dance on all sides, yet decline to deliver the rain we so desperately need.
And I find my thoughts turning, once again, to the image of the ollas, the water jars, a traditional symbol of labor, yes, but of well-being also.
I have always loved this image. The pot was by Angie Yazzie, one of the Pueblo’s true masters. Her specialty is micaware in largish sizes, nearly paper-thin of wall and edge, fragile in substance but strong in beauty and spirit. This one was as large as it looks in the old windowsill — not a giant-sized pot by any means, but far larger than the usual micaceous clay pieces made and sold for everyday use even when that use is to occupy a collection). It had a wonderfully round bowl with a fantastically fluted lip, so thin one would never dare touch it.
One day, Wings brought it outside our old gallery and set it in the open windowsill of the room used for wood storage. Midday, and the sun drove in from the southwest, turning the balance of the pot a rich coppery shade even as it bestowed a center band of gold and silver. The colors were the gift of the mica inherent in the clay itself, a glowing, glimmering, shimmering light from within. The black cloud to the right was a sooty and random gift of bark and flame; Angie covers her pots with tree bark before firing, the better to protect their fragile bodies from excess weight in the process.
And the entire pot seemed to hang, suspended, in mid-air, touching n either the sill itself nor the sash above. It was earth, air, fire, and water brought together by talent and skill and tradition, thence to transcend the bounds of gravity: an elemental magic.
This pot, of course, made its way into someone’s collection; it will never hold water save that which infused the clay and formed the vessel, and indeed was not designed to do so. It is a decorative piece, one intended to recall sizes and shapes of days past, and uses too, even as it declines to fulfill its progenitors’ original purpose.
Still, it calls to mind those old pots and bowls and jars, the labor involved in hauling water from river to fire, and the ancient beauty of this desert earth, infused with the light of the sun itself.
That sun and that earth, elements that have danced together as long as the people have lived, misled invaders into believing in the fantastical notion of whole cities made of gold.
Now, perhaps, it’s time to see what they can teach us about surviving, and thriving, in a world with far less water. We need an elementl magic of an other sort now.
~ Aji
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