Waves of heat and weather continue to pass through the region, but their aim is decidedly hit or miss. Here at Red Willow, we have had far too much of the former, while yesterday’s repeated storm systems managed to produce only a dozen drops before abandoning the land to temperatures near the century mark again.
The drought seems deeper when the scent of rain appears, but the fact of it remains stubbornly, tantalizingly out of reach.
By all rights, this should be a season of extremes, and it is, but something is missing now: It should be a time of oppositional forces and contending spirits, of cold fronts born of the summer storm wrestling the mercury into submission, of white-hot mornings and snow-white hail covering the grass in the afternoons.
It is the same dynamic that creates the year itself, that sets summer and winter in opposition to each other — distilled in essence and telescoped in time into the days of a single season. Instead, we go about our days beneath the gaze of a relentless sun; we walk upon earth dry as ash and bone, and near as dead, too.
But hope is a stubborn, even stupid thing, one that does not fly so much as simply refuse to die, in the face of all evidence and circumstance. Memory reminds us of a time, not much long past at all, when this was a season of opposing forces, and the common fire of a united heart. Hope whispers insistently that such a world can be again . . . if we do the work.
Today’s two images have always seemed to me to be of a piece with each other: a matched pair that Wings captured at entirely different seasons and from opposing perspectives. He sent each one to me as he took it, at once an expression of love and a momentary morale boost as we went about the work of our days. The images themselves were, in a sense, united hearts — one the shadow cast in summer, the other the thing in itself against the winter snows — but more, the were an expression of our own hearts, united in romantic love, yes, but also in the love that finds its voice in work and community and common purpose.
And it occurs to me that such a manifestation provides the world itself with a blueprint for navigating these dark and deadly days.
Work is the act, but love is the motive. And when the work becomes seemingly impossible, the obstacles insurmountable, it’s easy to find our focus trapped in the dust and stone, or the bitter snows, causing us to forget the love that underlies it all. Our ways are not built on rules for their own sake, not manifest in the rigid authoritarian structures of control mistaken for power. Our ways are eminently practical, grounded in love for our peoples and our ways, for the ancestors and the spirits, for the earth itself and our place in the broader cosmos.
It’s how we survive, and how our worlds have survived. It’s no accident that more than 80% of this planet’s natural biological diversity is found in the lands currently tended by its Indigenous peoples.
And so, with the world on fire around us in increasingly literal terms, we are still able to find hope in a dry, dusty, drought-ridden earth. We still believe in the promise of the opposing forces of the seasons and the skies, capable of taking us from this ashen existence into the cooling precipitation of winter. But we also know that we cannot depend upon it happening of its own accord, and so we put in the work, of common purpose and a fire in the heart.
And that brings us directly to today’s featured work, both in name and in spirit. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
A Fire In the Heart Cuff Bracelet
A fire in the heart keeps body and spirit warm. Wings creates a tribute to the flames of love and devotion with a pair of precious metals and one’s crimson castoffs. The heart cabochon is wrought from the pure fire of molten gold, cooled and hardened into the glossy material known as Rosarita (gold slag). It sits in the embrace of a scalloped bezel, the better to set off its domed surface; both rest atop a heart-shaped backing, cut freehand with a jeweler’s saw, that extends just beyond the bezel’s edges to limn the stone in silver. The setting rests atop the center of a slender band of solid sterling silver, heavy-gauge and highly polished on the surface, with a silken Florentine finish on the inner band. The cuff is 6″ long by 5/16″ across; the setting is 7/8″ high between highest and lowest points by 7/8″ across at the widest point; the heart-shaped cabochon is 3/4″ high between highest and lowest points by 3/4″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Additional views shown below.
Sterling silver; Rosarita (gold slag)
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Yes, it’s literally the name of the work. And it is fiery: that link missing from the paired photos, shadows cast upon a hot and dusty earth, cold metal against blue skies and snowdrifts.
Of course, this second image replicates the shadow motif, too, although it’s not what draws the eye. That’s reserved for the solidity of iron, rusted and weathered green now. But in the lower left, the shadow reappears — smaller now, and in reverse, taken from the vantage point of a gate opened to the world instead of seemingly closed.
But for our world, it’s never closed: Our world is here, and our work, too, and we attend to it daily. It’s small in the scheme of things, seemingly inconsequential to colonial values . . . and yet, imagine what could be achieved if everyone did likewise with their own corner of the world, their own small patch of earth and sky.
Imagine what could be achieved by harnessing the power of the natural world instead of always contending against it, always at odds with its essential spirits — if we learned, at long last, to work with its opposing forces, around the common fire of united hearts.
We could rebuild the world, for the seventh generation and beyond.
~ 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.
