Monsoon season is here.
It’s a bit different from those of year past: earlier in the season; mostly later in the day; a little colder and a little less consistent. But it is here, and no mistake, and we are grateful for it.
Unlike its historical iterations, our rains are coming mostly in the evenings now — even overnight, as was the case during the night just past. The land is thriving, and it’s possible to feel both the relief and the sense of raw joy coming from the earth and her children now.
It’s a reminder, one I have had occasion to experience in symbolic terms over the last couple of days, that very often, the storm itself is a gift. There is light in the storm, but it’s not the chance of sun breaking through that gives it its beauty, no: It’s that haunting, ethereal, positively eerie glow that tells us that powerful forces are at work in our world.
It’s the glow of mystery and medicine.
Today’s featured work is the manifestation of both, in terms both metaphorical and literal. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Light In the Storm Anticlastic Cuff Bracelet
It is in the eye of the storm that we are afforded a glimpse of its passing, when the clouds part momentarily to let the light descend. Wings has captured the glow of those rays in this anticlastic cuff, as big and bold as the storm itself, as bright as the light that transcends it. The band is wrought of sixteen-gauge sterling silver, heavier than usual for the shaping required of an anticlastic band, and sloped gently upward on either side. Its surface is free of adornment save a row of chased traditional symbols that run its entire length: stylized thunderheads paired together at their bases to form a sig of the Four Sacred Directions, each mated pair embracing an Eye of Spirit, that which watches over us even in the fiercest storm. At its center, elevated upon a small sterling silver cylinder, rests another representation of Spirit’s Eye: the light itself, caught and held fast in a massive cabochon of dove-gray labradorite. The stone possesses breathtaking depth and clarity, shot through with angled inclusions like sheets of rain and refracting the light into a gold-tinged rainbow of color. Hand-stamped stars of various shapes and sizes spread stardust along the cuff’s inner band. Band is 1-11/16″ across; cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 11/16″ high (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below. First in Wings’s new series, The Light Collection.
Sterling silver; labradorite
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In this place, the skies run all the colors of the rainbow entirely on their own — yes, even green, in those twilit hours of flawless, glass-sharp clarity when the color gradient between earth and sky is perfect.
At this season, though, the same skies become a furious dance of electric hues whirling with darkly subtle grays, all the shades of smoke and fire and more spiraling overhead, and on all sides, too. On this day, it is the grays that predominate, save for the giant thunderhead spreading fast now above the western horizon: one colossal bank of blues with a giant violet base, its crown still fluffy and whiter than snow. Elsewhere in the sky, the grays hold that eerie golden-green light, as though we move beneath a globe of simmering Labradorite.
A globe, in fact, just the like the one in today’s featured masterwork.
The rains are not due this day before mid-afternoon, if they materialize at all, but it’s a safe bet that they will.
In the meantime, this day at the birth of June is awash in hauntingly beautiful grays and aswirl in colder winds. As the clouds close in, they carry all the wild promise of the storm, and the glow of mystery and medicine to come.
The earth is ready and grateful for it all, and so are we.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
