October first.
The village is quiet today, at least in relative terms. Yesterday’s feast is over, the pole having played its role. The tourists have departed, and the people go about the business now of autumn. Here, that means work, and no small amount of it. An ordinary winter here will be harsh; this one is projected to be harder than usual. And while today’s unseasonably high temperatures belie the fact, it’s on track to arrive early, too. And so the work must get done, and in a shorter amount of time . . . just to be on the safe side.
We know all about anticipatory labor, about what it means to rearrange one’s days “just to be on the safe side.”
This is the season of harvest, and of hauntings, too. It also happens to be the month of my birth, and my favorite month of the year for reasons entirely unrelated to that fact. I have always been a child of fall and winter, and of the storm, but I am also one of color and fire, shadow and light, and all the eerie, haunted spaces in between. October is the month that, at least in a typical year, holds them all.
Unlike the October image captured above, there is, at this moment, no snow capping the peaks. Last night’s rain never materialized, instead detouring southeast, and while we would have welcomed it, there are today lands east of here that will incur the wrath of a storm that has gained speed and mass and force in the process. Here, most of the clouds have, if not departed, at least parted, showing an azure sky between their fluffy masses of icy white, the whole land lit by an amber sun.
And this afternoon, the shadows will be long indeed.
It’s a wonderful time for photography here. It’s not merely the colors, although they are at the most fiery and intense now and in the weeks to come. It’s not even the light, or rather, not only the light, although in October in this place, that element is magic and mystery and medicine, all three. It is also the lines drawn and shadows cast, a union between earth and sky mediated, midwifed, by light and shadow and whatever angles and structures may stand or fall between them.
And at the village, that includes this land mass’s most ancient standing architecture. October light puts single-story adobe on an equal footing with the Pueblo’s famed multi-story houses, the shadows the former cast producing what appears to human eyes to be at least as much mass as the latter. On this day, they will be accented by the pole, too: a tree of pure sunlit gold towering above the village, its shadow scribing a line in the dusty earth of the plaza, pointing toward the mountain and all it holds sacred.
Pointing, interestingly enough, away from church and village entry, away entirely from the outside world. The church, too, sends its own shadow pointing in the same direction, a colonial institution rendered in wholly traditional architecture, its form and shape Indigenous in spirit and in fact — as though animated by a spirit capable of reaching for, and to, a much older sacred.
In that image, it is the shadow on the right that comes from the church, the crenellations of roofline and bell tower clear and yet unfocused in the late-day light. If you look carefully, closely, you can see the shadow of its cross, too — not cruciform, but one that reaches to the winds and the sacred directions that extend far beyond the plaza, to walk upon the earth, to scale the mountain peaks, to soar across the blue skies overhead.
Today’s featured works embody these shapes and spirits, their traits and tasks. There are three works, all in the same category, the final three in current inventory of a small informal series (three of which have already sold). And these three, pairs of earrings all, seem especially well suited to the imagery featured here today — small bejeweled pollinators, messenger spirits, beings capable of soaring on wind and light, casting fluted shadows that extend to all directions, tiny emissaries pointing our attentions to the ethereal and ephemeral gifts of this season, a harvest of shadows and light.
The first pair catches and captures the blue of the clear October skies. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Floating Azure Earrings
Our world soars on warm silver winds and floating azure skies. Wings gives form and life to wind and sky and the small spirits that inhabit them with these butterfly earrings, all graceful silver wings holding at their heart perfect blues of summer skies. Each dangling drop flares elegantly at top and bottom, winglines articulated, repoussé-fashion, with shimmering depth. At the center of each earring, a tiny round cabochon of bright blue lapis lazuli rests in the embrace of a plain, low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; lapis cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
There are points in the day, both early and late, when the blue leaches from the sky at this season. Sunsets sometimes turn green, as happened last night with the low-lit gradient in the western sky.
But even at midday, the azure pales almost to white in places, and when the light comes from the southwest, the sky fades almost to the shades of the crosses and crenellations and the interior walls of the bell towers, an old white that holds all the shades of a high early moon.
It’s a color found in the second in today’s informal series of featured works. From the pair’s description:
Moondrift Earrings
Warm nights are lit by moondrift, a soft cool glow floating gently overhead on wings of silvered stardust. With these butterfly earrings, Wings invokes the illuminating light of a translucent moon, set across the sky on the crystalline arc of night. Each earring dances in place, three-dimensional wings flared and defined to refract the silvery light. At the center of each sits a small round rainbow moonstone, surface domed and center infused with faint shades of blue and gray, resting serenely in the embrace of a plain low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; moonstone cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; rainbow moonstone
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The cabochons are indeed rainbow moonstone, but like their more ordinary white moonstone counterparts, these resemble sherds of ice: translucent, inclusions refracting multiple shades of white, from near-silver to dove gray, shades older than the earth and the symbols that rise from it.
And make no mistake: This is a place where form and shape arise organically from the earth, whatever its walls and windows ultimately contain. Even the whitewashed walls, the color of the paint that refracts the tolling of the bells on All Souls’, were originally traditionally natural substances.
Their shades have faded and changed now, too, picking up the colors of the dusts of the earth even as the wind weathers away their bright surfaces. But the structures upon which they rest, the square towers and crenellated kiva steps of the parapet, the wooden four-spoked crosses at the top . . . even in a sky bleached temperature and season, they still catch the light of an amber sun, their corners glowing gold, edges limned and shimmering.
In that respect, they summon the spirit of the third of today’s featured works within this small informal series, a pair of earrings that carry on their layered wings the substance and spirit of tiny suns. From their description:
Chrysalis Sun Earrings
Dawn takes flight on silver wings, bearing the orb of a chrysalis sun. Wings summons the sun and the transformative spirit of the day with these butterfly earrings, newly emerged from the cocoon of night. Each drop drifts gently from side to side, its flared top and bottom adance in sharp relief. At the center of the wings sits a tiny amber orb, each cabochon as timeless as the light and glowing with its own cosmic fire, each set in the cool, secure embrace of a plain, low-profile bezel. Earrings hang 1-3/8″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; iolite cabochons are 3/16″ across (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; amber
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This pair, at least of the three that remain, has always been my favorite. They are the shade of newborn suns, true, but also of the fire that is our earth in fall.
It is a glow that inhabits, animates and inspirits, both the dust of the earth and the leaves of aspen and cottonwood. Some of the clay here is infused with mica, and when dried in the sun or fired as a vessel, it becomes simultaneously red and gold, copper and silver, ashimmer with pure light. It’s why colonial invaders, those who insisted, over and over, upon construction and reconstruction of a church that reaches eternally toward more ancient spirits, believed on first sight that this was the fabled City of Gold of their most grasping dreams and rapine fantasies.
But the earth knows better, the clay and soil and even the dust. The light knows better, too. So do the trees that stand guard around the plaza and elsewhere across these lands, sentinels large and small who go gold and amber, coral and copper, crimson and scarlet, bronze and umber in this last dance of the light before the earth’s harvest demands their robes for reaping.
And in the meantime, the afternoon sun turns its face to the walls, to the windows and doorways, to the pole from the feast and the rooflines always present. It turns them into another kind of magic, too, shadows carved like kiva steps, light draped across the land like a butterfly’s wings.
For the spirits of the season demand their own harvest, too, their own reaping of the rewards of a year’s journey and labor, and in the path that they travel is a great momentary gift to us: a harvest of shadows and light.
~ 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.
