The rains returned again overnight, intermittent showers giving way at dawn to a wan yellow sky.
Our weather patterns are very different now.
For us, this is not a bad thing, although we remain wary of embracing ur new good fortune too tightly. We know that it is a direct result of climate change, and for every blessing it confers upon us, someone somewhere else, even among our own, the world’s indigenous peoples, will face a curse in return. I’ve written at length — great length — about the threats our communities face from anthropogenic climate change, about how the effects of two centuries of colonial rapine and pillage of the earth are now about to realize the sort of success that a thousand organized campaigns of genocide never could. If you’re interested in such topics, you can read more here, here, here, here, here, and here. [I’ve written much more than this over the years, and there is more in the works, but the linked series serves as a solid introduction to the issues.]
It creates, in a manner of speaking, an odd sort of collective survivor’s guilt, one for a death that has not yet occurred, yet we know to be inevitable. The questions that remain are ones of scope and scale. We will, and soon, be presented with a butcher’s bill of epic proportion, one that has already begun tallying the erasure of whole cultures, some swamped by sea level rise and drowned, others reduced to ash by drought and wildfire.
The world, whatever it chooses to believe, is long past the point of prevention, at least of the vanguard destruction. The only avenue open to us now on that front is one of mitigation: of summoning life from the ashes that have already come, even if the world yet declines to notice it.
In some cultures, they call this phenomenon the Phoenix, a wingéd creature of supernatural strength and power that not merely survives the fire, but is born of the flames. Others call it the Firebird, less chimeric in appearance but no less instilled with the power of rebirth. Our peoples have always known of fire’s ability to purify and cleanse, and the old stories are filled with beings who have emerged from the flames to help the people.
Wings has spent his life living with this land, learning its patterns and habits, becoming intimately familiar with the rhythm of its heartbeat. He has lived through generations of climate change in real time, witnessed the literal spark that ignited the fire of 2003 and come through its flames and smoke and ashes to the other side. It should surprise no one, then, that these thoughts are never far from his mind, or his heart — or that they find voice in his work.
It was one part of the inspiration that brought today’s featured work into being — it, and its companion works in Wings’s signature series, The Firebird Collection. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Firebird Necklace
The standard-bearer of Wings’s Firebird series. The Firebird is a spirit being, a wingéd one in red and black who emerges from the flames to fly between the worlds. Wings has captured her essence in this magnificent piece, a necklace in a feathery shape that takes visual and tactile flight. The wing-like pendant, a spectacular bezel-set rosarita teardrop trimmed in twisted silver, fans out into tips of sterling silver and old natural blood-red coral. It hangs from a substantial hand-made bail embossed with images of the Eye of Spirit looking in all directions. The entire pendant is suspended from a stunning strand of traditional beads formed of alternating segments of apple coral rondels and jet discs, all tapering upward in classic graduated style. The beads are 18.5 inches long; the pendant hangs 2.75 inches long (including bail); the setting is inches 1.75 long by one inch across at the widest point; and the rosarita cabochon itself is 1.25 inches long by 11/16 of an inch across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; rosarita (gold slag); branch coral; apple coral; jet
$2,200 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Our peoples are not much for saviors in the sense that Christianity understands the term. In our way, they neither expunge sins nor absolve responsibility; those are on us. They come, when needed, to help point the way, to provide direction and clarity when our world is enveloped in a haze of smoke. Whether we choose to follow their lead remains on us, and there will always be those who decline to follow what we variously call the Red Road, the way to go well through life, the path of harmony, the sacred hoop.
The fact that some choose not to do so does not absolve us of our own obligations.
It is often a hard road, to be sure. Then again, our peoples are long accustomed to that; the ancestors knew well that the world made us no promises that life would be easy. Since contact, we have often found ourselves halted, detoured, the path before us flooded by rising waters or made impassable by the flames. It is at this juncture that the real choice arises before us and assumes living form: Do we give up, turn back, be subsumed? Do we walk into the fire and be consumed? Or do we do the work of finding a way above, below, around, or through, to come out the other side, creating a world in which our grandchildren’s grandchildren may live and thrive?
That world of the future is the Firebird. It is our task to bring her out of the ashes.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
