We have had precious little precipitation here in recent seasons, but what rain and snow we have had has come at unusual times. It used to be vanishingly rare to have a storm arrive during the night, or in the morning: Rain was very much a phenomenon of the afternoon hours, and snow was at least as likely to come in broad daylight as at night.
Over the last year, however, both have visited us in the dark hours — overnight under a black night sky, or at the indigo hours of dusk and dawn.
A direct result of climate change it may be, but it is not exactly an unwelcome development; in a landscape as harsh and extreme as this, the gentleness of night allows precipitation to do its job, to quench the earth but also to soak deep, instead of blowing out or running off in the heat or wind of the day. It gives the rain and snow a magic quality, too, as translucent drops and icy flakes absorb and refract the blues of the night.
For now, at least, Mother Earth seems to prefer these gentler storms, ones that cast their offspring softly in all directions to be welcomed in her embrace. In this climate of extended drought, we welcome their effects, too. Two inches of snow three nights ago is still being absorbed into the soil, putting every flake and every drop to perfect use.
The next storm in the forecast is a week off, and it predicts more rain than snow — not particularly surprising, given that temperatures are again rising to fifty in the daytime. In the past, there would be no rain here in winter — we could expect only snow until the spring thaw — but when the air is dry as ash, we’ll take what we can get, and give thanks for it, too.
Perhaps thoughts of such reasons for thanksgiving are what inspired today’s featured work, completed by Wings only this afternoon. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Indigo Rain Earrings
In the starlit hours of dusk and dawn, the storm brings the magic of indigo rain. Such mysterious precipitation finds expression in Wings’s earrings, bold sterling silver teardrops centered by a matched pair of freeform cabochons of sparkling lapis lazuli, each held fast in the embrace of a saw-toothed bezel. The stones are flat and smooth as the surface of a still lake, their blue deeper still, with faints gradients of indigo, cobalt, and violet. Each stone glimmers with delicate but brilliant flecks of gold and silver pyrite matrix, like a thousand shimmering stars reflected in the rain. The silver settings are polished to a mirror sheen, the better to catch the light; hand-drilled holes let them dance at the ends of sterling silver wires. Earrings hang 1.25″ long by 1″ across at the widest point (excluding wires); cabochons are .75″ long by .25″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$495 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These earrings are a classic traditional style, as spare and simple as it gets . . . and yet, they are works of extraordinary depth and beauty. The silver background setting catches the light and sends it dancing around the center stones. The stones themselves, despite their lack of surface doming, hold layers, even worlds, beneath their smooth surfaces. The shimmering matrix ripples across them like waves on dark seas, limned only by moon- and starlight, and the subtle color gradients in the lapis itself hints at hidden mysteries locked within their depths.
In a week when our attention has been held by notions of motion, of roads and paths, winds and storms, directions and hoops, these inspire meditation upon a direction of a different sort: the path downward from sky to earth, the trajectory of the rain. If water is life, the breath of the earth, then the time and path of precipitation is itself a prescription for health and harmony, In our small corner of the world, this is a truth as timeless as Mother Earth herself. In a time when she has been forced out of balance, we, and she, adapt . . . for abundance arrives on the arc of the indigo rain.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
