There is a feeling, now, of the world spinning ever faster, as though to shake off summer more thoroughly for a winter that refuses to wait.
It’s not the first time: Autumn mostly skipped us entirely, the world he shifting from summer straight to winter, and brown for the whole of it. That is, perhaps, more to be expected in the throes of extreme drought. This year’s slight recovery, though, does not seem to have been enough to protect the land against the depredations of an early hard freeze. While our own aspens have not yet turned, waiting, as always, until the last possible moment, the rest of the trees in the area have gone suddenly from green and gold to a dry and dusky brown.
And once again, we are left to worry about not only what the cold season holds, but future patterns, too. Here, a hard winter is always preferable, for the snows are the medicine that keeps the land alive year-round.
At times like these, all we can do is to double our own efforts as we keep faith with the spirits that have kept us this long. But faith is harder to sustain on some days than others.
And so at times such as these, we look to the old ways, to our ancestors and their teachings, to the gifts of the spirits. The peoples Indigenous to this land mass have lived under existential threat these five hundred years and more. Tomorrow is our colonial governments’ formal marking of it (even as yesterday was the given date, however inconvenient to three-day weekends), whether they honor genocide or those whose extermination was sought in the process. The threats facing us now have been compounded: the half-life of colonial invasion, still radioactive and increasingly capable of killing even those whose ancestors set the whole toxic cycle in motion.
But as always, the spirits remain to us, elemental and otherwise: the water, the fire; earth and sky, wind and light; those who assume other forms and shapes and bless us in other ways. And always, at bottom, there are the gifts of the sacred medicines, of water and smoke as tendrils of power, prayers proof against the cold and the coming of the snow.
Today’s featured work, one of Wings’s newest, embodies the prayer and the power and the spirits that give them force and fulfillment. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
The Gift of the Water Bird Earrings
The gift of the Water Bird is a blessing beyond price. Wings calls together the elements of its path with these earrings, long, tall triangles in a tipi shape, scored freehand on all sides with a chisel to create a border. Gracefully flowing symbols trace the bottom and sides, a mix of water and smoke spiraling upward from which the Water Bird rises, visible near the top on both sides and at the apex, a repeating stampwork pattern manifest with a sense of motion and flight. Near the bottom at the center of each rests a single freeform natural turquoise cabochon, imperfect ovals like drops of rain, both in the shades of seafoam and robin’s eggs touched here and there with a delicate golden-colored matrix and rusty copper webbing. Dangling drops are suspended from sterling silver earrings wires held fast by silver jump rings. Earrings hang 2-1/4″ long by 1″ to 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; freeform cabochons are 3/4″ long by 7/16″ to 1/2″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; natural blue-green American turquoise, probably from Colorado’s Cripple Creek
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s become hard for me to choose a favorite pair among Wings’s current inventory of silverwork earrings; there are too many that are infused with their own unique beauty and power. But in any ranking, this pair sits among those at the very top. They dance long but light, no weighting of the ear as they catch the sun and refract its shine. The stones possess their own subtle force, each stubbornly independent of the other in shape and matrix, yet more alike that not, in substance and in spirit both.
But it is, I think, the sttampwork that makes them: all freehand, a design that encapsulates perfectly the flowing force of the first medicine, water, even as it embodies the spiraling power of prayers carried on smoke. And the Water Bird . . . repeated at the top, in a layered pattern, as though to embody not many, but a single one in motion, soaring skyward in flight.
It’s a reminder, too, at a season when the sheer elemental force of climate and weather, time and dark, threaten to overwhelm us, that there is power in the smallest of things. What is to us ephemeral, a spiral of smoke vanishing in a second, blown apart by the winds, is still perceptible by the keener senses of the spirits. It reinforces the truth that our ancestors knew: that there is strength to be found in the old ways, in prayer, in asking, with simple honor and respect . . . and that however small our voices, seemingly lost upon the winds, our words have form and shape, and they are heard.
They are carried, after all, on tendrils of power.
~ 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.
