Outside are clear but hazy skies; the air is hot and heavy. The clouds drift around the horizon in a daisy-chain pattern, linked, yet not ready to amass in any more collective formation.
The moon at dawn was a marvel, the thinnest of silver scythes blading the amber eastern sky. Tonight will be the last we see of it, if then, for a couple of days; the new moon arrives at 9:12 PM local time tomorrow, and no clarity of air and sky will be sufficient to bring it into focus for mere mortal eyes.
Still, even without its brilliant but slender light, the skies are nothing short of remarkable now. Should today’s storms arrive late, they will likely grant us the gift of a spectacular sunset; come earlier and pass beyond our boundaries, and the meteor shower may yet be visible to us after all.
Here at Red Willow, it is one of the traditional pursuits of summer, this act of chasing stars. It is, after all, one of the rare and magical aspects of this place: dark sufficiently complete to show us the diamond-beaded beauty of the heavens; an elevation high enough, and horizons unbroken enough, to let us see the occasional shooting star.
Of course, shooting stars are, generally speaking, meteors — or in their steadier, longer-lived form, comets. The latter are much more rare, but when one appears, it puts on a spectacular light show. Back in the days of the so-called Hale-Bopp comet, Wings did that which seems impossible outside of pop music: He caught a falling star — on film, of course. Divorced from the faux-mystery and cultish controversy that surrounded its appearance, it was possible to see it for the phenomenon it truly was, especially across these crystal-clear high-desert heavens. The photo showed the sky spangled in its best summer regalia: robes in midnight and violet, cobalt and amethyst, rose and coral, all beaded with diamonds and ablaze with fire and ice.
It’s an image that perhaps informed the creation of the first two items in today’s featured set, and informal collection in miniature. We begin with the two most closely linked, the necklace and earrings, both of which are built around their own private galaxies. From the description of the first, found in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Dust of Ancient Stars Necklace
The dust of ancient stars reaches our world in the blue velvet skies of night. Wings honors night, color, journey, and light with this necklace, a strand of intensely-hued chips and nuggets around a galaxy-like focal bead. The necklace is strung on sterling silver bead chain and anchored at either by a segment of tiny polished chips of midnight-blue goldstone, each alight with an internal fire. The diminutive blue nuggets flow inward to meet up with longer sodalite, lightly polished nuggety chips of cobalt blue and white with the occasional hint of its hallmark rose matrix here and there. Between the lengths of sodalite, the center stone is flanked by an additional brief length of blue goldstone to set it off to brilliant effect. The focal bead is a large rounded oval of lapis lazuli, cobalt and indigo and violet blues aswirl with shimmering mists of gold and silver pyrite, a self-contained universe aglow with cosmic dust. Bead strand hangs 17″ long excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Beaded Hoop Collection. Coordinates with Blue Nova earrings. Long view shown at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; sodalite; blue goldstone
$375 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The second item, the earrings, is not intended as a perfect match, but rather, as a complementary work. Still, it incorporates the same stones and patterns, small cosmos shimmering with the brilliance of old exploded stars and bookended by the blue skies of day and night. From their description in the Earrings Gallery:
Blue Nova Earrings
The night skies are alive with the spirits of deep space, planets and stars aswirl in a blue nova of creation and cosmic motion. Wings brings together skies, stars, and galaxies in these bead earrings, each dangling drop strung on sterling silver wire and hanging from sterling silver earring wires. At the center of each is its own small universe, large round ovals of dark blue lapis lazuli exploding in gold and silver pyrite whorls of cosmic dust against a darkened sky. Each is flanked at top and bottom by paired sodalite nuggets, lightly polished and banded in bright blue and white; each is anchored at either end by tiny paired chips of blue goldstone the color of midnight, each bead glowing from within with its own shimmering fire. Earrings hang 1.75″ long excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Standing Stones Collection. Coordinates with The Dust of Ancient Stars necklace.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; sodalite; blue goldstone
$155 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Ancient or now, sometimes they align in perfect ways:
The indigo blues of a warm summer’s night; a waxing crescent of silver and gold, so slender and so bright that its unlit face shows clearly; a pair of planets at angles sufficient to create a truly cosmic trinity.
It’s a reminder that the gifts of the cosmos, like life itself, contain multitudes: at once fleeting and eternal, ephemeral and yet utterly cyclical. The universe is a grand hoop holding us all in its starlit embrace, and we walk our own hoop within it.
And that is the link to the third work in today’s informal collection in miniature, one created prior to and completely independently of the other two, yet one that embodies many of the same teachings, and similar gifts. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery:
The Sacred Hoop Coil Bracelet
Truth may be found in the sacred hoop, infinite and eternal, journey and existence alike. Wings calls the wisdom of its experience into being with this coil, a winding hoop of symbolic color and traditional beauty. It begins with the darker shades at either end, represented in some traditions as black and in others as blue, here manifest in both colors by way of lengths of jet flowing into cobalt orbs of lapis lazuli. Each is followed by slightly larger beads of chatoyant red tiger’s eye, shimmering in shades of luminescent red, extending inward to brightly translucent freeform nuggets of glowing yellow citrine. At the center sits an expanse of the first shade of the hoop, snowy spheres of white-lip mother-of-pearl shell as luminescent as the North Star itself. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Part of The Coiled Power Collections.
Memory wire; jet; lapis lazuli; red tiger’s eye; garnet; tiger’s eye; citrine; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This one holds all the shades of the cosmos, and its constituent spirits, too: the black of deep space; the pale clear gold of dawn and the chatoyant bronze and crimson of sunset; the cobalt of storm and early night; and the luminous white of the moon in her fullest phase. It put me in mind of an image from earlier this year, one caught on the night of a blood moon, before the clouds had cleared sufficiently to show its scarlet robes.
The image itself reminds me of Labradorite — smoky shades iridescent with a spectrum of color and light. It looks, too, like that which we no longer see here, one of the spirits of summer from the lands of my own home: the Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.
It’s light sufficient to mask even the brightest stars for a moment or ten, or even an hour. But in the time it takes for the moon to transcend the clouds and haze of our atmosphere, the stars reveal themselves again, sometimes active, sometimes quiet.
At the moment, it is midday, and the clouds are amassing around us once again. I suspect that if the rain comes, it will do as it did yesterday: a sudden intense storm that last an hour or two, then plays a slow departing game of hide-and-seek with the sun. If I am right, tonight the sky will be a blanket of nearly pure jet, and we shall have the chance once more to indulge in the purest of the pursuits of summer. Come the dark, we shall be out of doors once again, chasing stars.
~ 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.
