Yesterday’s gale-force winds have not departed, but merely circled around, delivering new flurries to the peaks and a knife-sharp northeasterly chill to us here below. The cold today is a vicious, hungry thing, seeking to drive out every bit of warmth cast off by a still-weakened sun.
Winter is not yet ready to loose its grip on the land, and an embryonic spring is no match for its the force and fury of its elemental power.
Still, even as the mountain peaks turn white again, their slopes are already more green than yesterday. The ferocity of winter may be capable of great destruction, but it is just as essential to a complete renewal of our world. These winds still deliver the snow, and that is medicine for an earth just beginning to awaken once again.
Today began in the clear cold indigo and glowing gold of the branches and sky above. Now, the afternoon has devolved to the ancient grays of the trunks, dull and dark and just as capable of scraping the skin from your limbs.
Medicine is needed now, more than ever.
Today’s featured work embodies these powers of healing and regeneration, in form and in name alike. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Medicine Coil Bracelet
We find truth in medicine, from the plants and the animals and more ephemeral spirits. Wings pays tribute to the power of traditional medicine to heal the body and restore harmony to the spirit by way of this coiling, curing circle of color. It begins at either end with the first medicine, water, that which gives and restores and is life itself, as embodied in bold bright blue nuggets of the Skystone, in the form of Sleeping Beauty turquoise. The water flows into the world of healing plants, beginning with wild freeform nuggets of malachite that become round polished malachite orbs. Small spheres of beautifully translucent jade stretch toward the large globes at the center, an expanse of small worlds in the form of unakite, gems manifest in the brilliance of new green aswirl with the red clay of the earth. Memory wire expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji.
Memory wire; Sleeping Beauty turquoise; malachite; jade; unakite
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The brilliant blues of the morning are present, sherds of sky and drops of water hardened into jewels of near-incalculable worth. The clouds and light swirl and spiral in dusky gray-greens and hints of sunny coral at the center. But beneath the more flamboyant shades, what is most present are the greens: the deep evergreen forests, lush and fully alive year-round, and the softer jade of the new blade and leaf, just beginning to find their way into the light.
At the moment, none of the trees have leafed into these soft shades of spring, but every one is now beaded with the buds that will soon grow into a brighter, fuller fringe. Stand beneath the weeping willows this day, and if the wind does not blow you off you feet, you will see the gold from the image above webbed against a small patch of turquoise sky . . . but you will also see the hard evidence of new growth, and a new dedication to it, gray trunks turning brown again, branches no longer wholly skeletal, reaching for renewal.
This soft green fringe is not so far off now: a matter of weeks at most. Meanwhile, they know how to handle the season’s trickster winds, to bow and bend and refuse to break, to seek the medicine of storm and sky, to bathe in the snow and luxuriate in the waters of each successive thaw.
It’s a lesson we would do well to learn. It’s not a matter of adjusting our essential selves to which way the wind blows, not a matter of trading our principles for convenience or gain, but rather, one of knowing how to stand and move within the winds. The outside world devotes itself overmuch to what it carelessly (and often clumsily) labels “progress,” without thought to its effects; indeed, it is just such “progressivism” (and I mean the word in both senses here) that has brought the world to this awful pass. It’s not a question of rigidity, nor one of too convenient flexibility. Rather, it’s knowing when to bend in order not to break, and when to rise again; when to hunker down against the storm, and when to reach for renewal from the very skies themselves.
Today is a hard day, one that can only honestly be described as full of a brutal physicality. It’s not a day to be abroad if you can help it, and not a day to tempt fate or try to challenge the elements.
But tomorrow will be a little different, and the day after that, and the day after that. Meanwhile, there is medicine on the wind, and renewal within reach.
The world can do this. So can we.
~ 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.
