The snowstorm has moved out, and we are left with the deep cold.
It won’t last long, of course; not this time. The escalating warming patterns of climate collapse have warped our usual post-storm deep freeze, what once would have been a week or so of sub-zero temperatures, into a day or two of a mercury hovering near the freezing point, the brutal chill the product only of high winds.
And they are high winds today: blowing out of the north, and in the absence of snowfall, nonetheless creating a ground blizzard on their own. We are fully at the square of the sun now, its light blindingly brilliant, even as remnant clouds occasionally veil it from view.
The day feels fraught, dangerous, despite the intensity of the light.
It is, of course. One need look no farther than our drastically-altered climatic and seasonal patterns to know the truth of that. One need look no farther than the latest headlines, too: genocides of the worst sort active on multiple continents; earthquakes and other “natural” disasters born of colonialism-driven climate collapse. Our earth is in jeopardy now, its children, too, and those who would presume to “lead” us are doing their utmost to herd us all straight into the conflagration.
It’s a dire outlook, but an accurate one. Neither of us has ever believed in the “love and light” nonsense of so-called “toxic positivity,” which is one big constituent part of the colonial problem. One cannot resist, fight, fix, or heal what one refuses to face on the most honest of terms, stripped entirely bare of propaganda’s prettifying — and numbing — effects. Our ancestors knew this truth all too well, and it is their determination to face the hardest of truths head-on, unflinchingly, that has assured our own existence here today.
And so it becomes incumbent upon us to learn to use this new, too-bright presence of the sun, this too-early departure of too-small storms to heal that which is being so terribly wounded now. If the water of the storm is medicine, so, too, is the light of the sun: warmth, illumination, sustenance, growth. As with anything, too much ceases to be medicine and becomes its opposite, but it is our obligation to know those limits and learn to adapt accordingly, that we might have one more chance to save this world so much of it has treated so carelessly.
So injuriously.
It begins with understanding our place in and upon it, our relationships to our relatives who inhabit it and the forces that keep it on its axis, revolving, alive. Today’s featured work is one that places us precisely in relation to Father Sun himself, a reminder of the obligations, for some of our peoples on this land mass, to pray and sing him on his journey across they sky now, in these short, dark, hard days of winter. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Square of the Sun Ring
The sun is no more square than the stone, but both make it possible to believe in a world with four corners. Wings summons angles at the square of the sun and the spirit of this ancient light in this ring, a sharply angular, yet high-domed rectangle of blood-red carnelian set upon a band of hammered silver light. The band is cut freehand in his signature scalloped design, then hammered by hand to give it a shimmering vintage look and feel. The carnelian cabochon, glossy and slightly translucent, hints at hidden depths as it rests securely in a scalloped bezel. The band is 1/2″ wide at the widest point and 5/16″ across at the narrowest point; the stone is 3/4″ long by 1/2″ wide (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; carnelian
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the sculpted band of this piece, saw-cut entirely freehand in a gracefully symmetrical design. It reminds me of the gentle flow of the water . . . and of the light. The hammered surface, too, evokes the same look and feel, the same animating spirits here entwined: the sun’s reflection, its gift and dance, across the surface of crest and wave as the water moves, flows and laps along its path and in the winds.
The scalloped bezel frames the rectangular carnelian cabochon beautifully — edges petal-like, opening as though like a flower, its center the fire of alpine flower and winter sun alike, the kind that blossom even in the darkest depths of of the cold season.
And the world seems very cold and dark now. We personally have no fear of night, but that cannot hold true for those who live in fear of every breath being their last, beneath on onslaught of illegal bombing campaigns. We have no fear of winter, either, but we recognize that for those without homes or heat, the cold will be deadly all the same.
And it is incumbent upon us all to heal the harms being done in our names.
The fire of alpine flower and winter sun must be one that purifies, that cleanses, that warms and illuminates, that heals the world. We have to learn to wield it for good.
~ 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.
