Some nights it seems I wake up every hour, and last night was one, a mix of pain and heat and, eventually, the Cricket’s endless barking and the unmistakable scent of an angry skunk penetrating whatever sleep I had managed momentarily to find.
I say “last night,” but more accurately, it was the early hours of this morning, skies dark velvet beaded with the light a thousand visible stars. On the basis of the view alone, it was perhaps worth it.
On one of my latter awakenings, perhaps between three and four o’clock, I’m positive that I witnessed the first distant fall of the Perseid meteor shower, which began its annual visit two nights ago, and is slated to remain with us until September 1st. Midsummer here is a season of beauty, even in the face of this killing drought, and one of its great gifts is that of starfall nights.
Today’s featured work embodies this annual phenomenon in glowing ethereal form. It’s the necklace from Wings’s trio of last year called The Summer Elementals: Fire, three related works, each offered separately, to honor season, place, elemental force, and cultural perspective. This one was designed explicitly to embody the mystical flames of falling stars, their otherworldly shade and shimmer, and it succeeds beautifully. From its description in The Beaded Hoop Collection in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Mystical Flames of Falling Stars Necklace
Summer is the season of meteor showers, of the mystical flames of falling stars that pull the green glow of foxfire from the earth and aurora from distant skies as they arc through the night. With this necklace from his newest collection of extraordinary bead jewelry, Wings calls down the refracting green fire from the dark velvet of the midnight hours. At the center, four extraordinary giant barrel beads of faceted old-style green glass alternate with ultra-high-grade rondels of shimmering aquamarine, all of them catching and refracting the descending fire of the summer night. Moving upward, rich gray-green Picasso jasper rounds flow into more hot green and fiery ice. Anchor segments consist of doughnut rondels of glossy snowflake obsidian like individual starlit skies, bisected by individual aquamarine and rainbow moonstone rondels, beneath the intensity of deeper space: giant orbs of black tourmaline, smaller black moonstone spheres, icy selenite, and the starlike twinkle of sterling silver. Necklace hangs 22″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with Where the Lightning Strikes earrings [sold] and A Storm-Tossed Wildfire Sky coil bracelet. From the Fire series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown at the link).
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: Aquamarine; faceted green glass; Picasso jasper; snowflake obsidian;
rainbow moonstone; black moonstone; selenite; sterling silver
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The beads that form the true focus of this strand are old, and they are extraordinary: giant green glass barrels finely faceted, the better to catch sunlight and starshine and refract them back out into the world as summer’s phosphorescent foxfire. It’s the color of the fireflies’ glow, and of more haunting manifestations, too, and it is as luminous as it is fleeting — a flash of magic here, a glimpse of mystery there, until no one’s sure whether they’ve seen it or what it is, but they feel compelled to follow it, all the same.
The night hours are especially welcome here right now, as we endure the daytime heat. In truth, this heat wave is nowhere near the hottest actual temperatures we’ve experienced; they’re not even as high as our usual norm. What is different is the deadly twelve-hundred-year drought, the absence of any humidity, never mind any actual rain, and the increasingly obvious results of the ozone layer’s destruction. This is a hard summer, and a dangerous one — one in which the smallest spark or lighting strike can ignite a wildfire that will make last year’s record megafire seem small by comparison.
But at dusk, our world changes: it begins to cool, the shadows giving over to the blanket of full dark. The sidereal spirits show themselves to us as we await the rising of the moon in the early-morning hours — now virtually invisible, with the new moon arriving tomorrow, thence to bring us a new cycle of growing silvered crescents. There is a stillness to these hours, mostly broken only by the occasional barking of a dog, the rustling of the leaves in a newborn breeze.
And it feels as though our small overheated world can breathe once more. Only for a few short hours, true, before the suffocating heat and harsh glare return, but those hours are medicine itself.
This is the season of starfall nights, and we shall be watching for their track from sky to earth tonight.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
