It has been day.
It’s not over yet.
Yes, it’s full dark now; yes, we’re indoors for the evening. But the wind is still howling, battering at every gap, seeking a way inside. The air is still filled with dust, conditions more common to spring here have stripped yet another layer of soil from the earth and sent it around in walls and waves and spiraling, shifting shapes. And all of my daily work still lies ahead of me.
Again.
If anything I said four days ago could be called a New Year’s resolution, it would have been this: not to be doing my daily work at night because I’m forced to treat everything else as of greater priority. Four days into the new calendar year, and I have yet to see a single change on that front. Today was a bit different, because a relative needed my help, and I blocked off much of the day expressly for that purpose.
But tomorrow, all the other unrelated tasks and non-emergent events are going to wait.
It was a day that began with warm sunlight and bright blue skies, long white clouds fanned across the overhead sky like the ridged seams in a giant clamshell, a breathtakingly beautiful sight. Event the young red-tail seemed to appreciate it, having arrived early to perch in the dead weeping willows on the southwest side, allowing himself to be moved briefly by the harrying of magpies and smaller birds, just long enough to make a U-turn in midair and head right back to his branch. I was foolish enough to entertain hopes that the forecast was wrong.
Of course, by late morning, the winds were rising steadily; by early afternoon, they were blowing at gale force, driving whole walls and waves of dust and dirt before them. The sky was no longer blue, but a dirty gray-brown, reminiscent of the pall that accompanies wildfire smoke. And, of course, in such conditions, with this deadly drought, the prospect of wildfire is always a well-founded fear now.
A glance at the week’s forecast shows that our chance of snow predicted for Monday night and Tuesday morning has now been all but revoked entirely. Our world here is unutterably arid, soil dry as ash and old bones. We need precipitation — yes, rain, but even more, we need snow. And there is so little chance of either that we we need is a miracle, a little magic, an atmospheric love of sky for earth now.
Today’s featured work embodies just such a miracle, such magic, such a love of boundless proportions. It’s one of Wings’s newer pairs of earrings, two big, bold Skystone hearts that seem perfectly suited to each other, even though it turns out that they were pulled from the earth in very different places. It’s a work perfect for the next big commercial holiday, of course, but right now, it’s one that seems talismanic, both offering and prayer for the medicine our world needs so desperately now. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
An Atmospheric Love Earrings
If water is life, and breath, and medicine, then the rain is itself an atmospheric love, one skies and storm bestow upon the earth. With these earrings, Wings pays tribute the turquoise blues of those alpine desert skies, to the Skystone story that turns raindrops into jewels, and to the earth that survives and thrives by their gifts. Each dangling drop is formed of a perfect turquoise heart set into a low-profile scalloped bezel and edged with a slender strand of twisted silver. These Skystone cabochons were acquired as part of the same parcel, similar in size and shape and shade, but they appear to be from two different mines: the floating green matrix with fine brown veining marking the left as likely Royston; the clear bright blue with fine tendrils of red siltstone a hallmark of Bisbee on the right. They render a slightly deeper blue on-screen than they appear in natural light, and while they appear to be of slightly different sizes, their dimensions are identical; the difference lies in the shape in which each was cut, independently of the other. Both drops are suspended from slender sterling silver jump rings, with sterling silver coil-and-ball-bead French wires threaded through them. Earrings hang 1-18″ long by 1-1/16″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 7/8″ long by 7/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; natural American turquoise, likely Royston (left) and Bisbee (right)
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love the way this pair came together. Slotted into their respective compartments in Wings’s storage containers, they seemed nearly identical: size, shape, shades of blue. When he took them out and set them side by side on his workbench, preparatory to creating this pair, their unique properties became abundantly clear.
Some years ago, he acquired several heart-shaped cabochons at more or less the same time. Such parcels are often sold in lots, and it’s often a safe assumption that they are the same material, from the same mine of origin .
But not always.
Sometimes, vendors sort them into groups by rough shape and/or size, perhaps by color. Sometimes, those guidelines are rough indeed. And enough time has elapsed since their acquisition that neither he nor I recall whether they were indeed purchased together or separately. But a close look shows clearly that these are very different stones.
The size is virtually identical, if arrayed somewhat differently. Both are heart-shaped, although the cabochon on the left has a wider throat, more open than the one on the right. But they’re close enough in that regard that it’s mostly irrelevant, once they’re set into bezels and edged with twisted silver. And the shade of blue of the actual turquoise material, the base color of each cabochon is also virtually identical, that flawless bright blue of the desert sky in morning.
But the matrix of each stone is very different.
The one on the left, above, is a ringer for Royston turquoise, which comes from Nevada. There are a couple of other American mines whose material sometimes manifests with a matrix in that floating overlay of bright green with hints of golden brown, but this phenomenon is far and away most common to Royston.
The cabochon on the right? Same brilliant clear blue, but no floating overlays here, and no green and brown, either. This one has delicate veining of rich red siltstone, a color somewhere between burgundy and brick . . . and one that is a hallmark of Bisbee turquoise. Such color and matrix combinations can sometimes be found in other Arizona mines these days, even one or two in Nevada, but it’s Bisbee that’s actually known for it.
And I suspect that that is what we have here, one of each: a Skystone from Nevada; a Skystone from Arizona; two very different mines of origin . . . and two hearts that still seem as perfectly matched as those of any pair of human lovers.
And what is love, after all, but a coming together of two very distinct hearts? What is love but care of another, of a particularly selfless sort?
Yes, next month brings us the holiday associated with romantic love, but we need love as a way of being now, for ourselves, and for our world: a world in which the sky gives the gift of the First Medicine to an earth in need; one in which the earth returns it in its own way, too.
Such are the gifts of the water, and the light: the life and breath of love, for the earth, and for us all.
Who knows? Perhaps the skies will have had more than enough of the trickster wind’s unseasonal interference, and deliver a little snow in the week to come after all.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
