We awakened to tiny rivers flowing along the creases in the tarp on the deck this morning, raindrops already stilled, but their volume present and active. The forecast originally was for more precipitation later in the day, and the skies seem amenable, but the prediction now is for wind, the sort capable of battering every surface and turning small structures and old trees to little more than tinder and twigs.
It’s one more seasonal insult to add to the burden we already all bear, a heavy fog of infection and death entirely disproportionate to what we have all been indoctrinated to regard as a time of renewal.
Meanwhile, today the skies seem menacing, clouds dark and lowering, a nascent gale already beginning to moan past the cracks between door and sill. The highway is nearly empty, and reportedly town is, too, although we will not see that for ourselves before tomorrow, when we will be forced to venture out again, if only to pick up prescriptions. The artificial stillness is relieved only by the cries of the wind, the Maria of the old ballad and the howl of that still-older spirit, La Llorona, spiraling with the shrieks of ancient ghosts and the sobs of those now in the processing of becoming them.
In a world darkened by danger, unseen and unseeable but just as undoubtedly already here, it’s natural to seek the light.
We talk of light as distinct from water, but here the two are inextricably intertwined, a powerful ever-present force of nature that combines with one rarer here, a dance of arcs and spirals and bursts of illumination, a powerful and singular beauty that we can see but cannot touch. It’s powerful as metaphor, too, for the wisdom we seek, the dreams of a visionary world where the current crisis has passed and healing has been made possible again. We find it now in prayer and the making of offerings, in ceremony and the power of medicine: direction and flow, illumination in rivers of light.
And so it’s perhaps fitting that today’s featured throwback work should possess that as its name — Rivers of Light. It possesses, too, the beautifully webbed blue turquoise that appears in yesterday’s featured work, and will similarly appear in those bracelets to be highlighted in this space this weekend.
This one dates back to just days before Christmas, a part of that one large commission by a dear friend. I’ve featured a few of the others in this space already; a good half remain unposted as yet. This was, if memory serves, the first of the nine in the order that he created, one in the blues of our water and sky, lit from within by our powerful light.
As I’ve noted with the others from this particular group that I’ve already shown here, six were the more usual four-wrap size, while three were extended to six full wraps of the coil. This was one of the regular-sized bracelets, a spiral of blues and greens lit with abalone gray and pearl white, winding around a vortex of memory wire. For such pieces, the physical structure is always fundamentally the same, gemstone beads strung on the specially-treated stainless steel wire, and so the design of each one begins with color, symbol, stone, and whatever story he wishes it to tell.
As I’ve also noted before, Wings generally does intend each coil to tell its own story, one rooted in, drawn from, and manifest in the shapes and shades of our natural world here. That was especially the case with the coils in this commissioned collection, and he began the set with the blues and greens of our world at its most abundant.
Sometimes he structures the coils so that they are simply a cascade of stone and color — a rhythm to it, yes, but more linear, perhaps divided at the center with each length as a mirror image of the other, but entirely formed of segments of varying stones. Other times, as here, he deliberately creates a focal stone or set of stones and beads, the better to draw the eye toward the point of the piece’s individual story. Such was the case with this one.
What you see in the photo is a shot of it perfectly centered, as much above as below the center line of large white mother-of-pearl shell rounds alternating with slender, luminous oval discs of abalone shell. It provided a true center of “light,” of illumination, thanks to almost chatoyant nature of the mother-of-pearl and the color refraction of the whorled abalone surface.
The rest of the strand became, at each end, a descending gradient of size and color, lengths of bright round beads separated by type by single abalone discs. It began with silver-plated rounds that flowed into a section of green Russian amazonite, a marvel of shimmering luminosity that was nearly the same shade as the turquoise beads that would accent the coil next. The blue-green spiderweb turquoise rounds, separated from the amazonite and by the green garnet that followed by the solitary ovals of abalone shell, were slightly smaller than the amazonite, and in truth, ore blue than green. They were unidentified by the seller and unidentifiable to us as to their source, but they were clearly genuine, and beautifully webbed with an inky, tendril-like matrix, as fine as the webbing of any dreamcatcher and perhaps as useful, too.
From there, the coil moved on either end into segments of green: shimmering green garnet with hints of amber and rust here and there; and a glorious spring jade, bright as new leaves and blades of grass. They descended into smaller, deeper blues, glowing kyanite in cornflower blue marbled with luminous white, and an intensely-hued strand of tiny apatite rounds, each the same shade as the turquoise beads, but quasi-translucent and shimmering with their own light.
It became, truly, a pair of rivers of light: water and earth and sky flowing to and from each other, and which end was water and which was sky was never entirely clear. It was a reminder, or perhaps simply a lesson outright, on the nature of wisdom, of power, of medicine, of illumination — they flow simultaneously in more than one direction, forces of nature sharing power unencumbered by the laws, like gravity, that restrict our own actions. And, of course, at the center of each, connecting each, was the light itself — in this case, formed of the shells of ancient spirits who do us the great gift of leaving behind a bit of their beauty, and their wisdom with it.
We can use such wisdom now, caught as we are in rivers of time and circumstance, the former not on our side and the latter a tangible threat to our very existence. But they are not the only rivers that move us along. There is direction and flow, yes, and sometimes we will be swept downstream or fighting upward against the currents. But the one gift that is always present is illumination, bestowed by the spirits in rivers of light.
We just have to remember to look for it.
~ 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.
