Today looks and feels like fall: not this early threshold stage that the calendar insists is still summer, nor even the middling heart of the season, but the very depths of autumn, with newly darkened skies and gusty winds that hold more than a hint of haunted spirits within their whispery song.
The day began bright enough, with abundant sunshine filtered through brilliant blue skies scattered with puffs of white, a mercury a couple of degrees higher than at the same time in recent days. The official forecast had all but erased its earlier predictions of rain for today, pushing back the possibility of any real weather to tomorrow and Tuesday.
By midday, things looked very different.
The lowering slate-gray clouds are beautiful, but what really struck me was the sound of the wind through the trees. There is a particular sound unique to autumn here, a product of increasingly bare branches and the drying nature of the leaves that remain; it alters the wind’s voice in ways that are simultaneously eerie and yet somehow comforting, if only via the contrast between what they represent and the knowledge that we have the option of being indoors, safe and warm.
And it casts last night’s skies in a different light.
I spend far too many nights sleepless now; it’s a combination of constant pain and simply the insomnia-producing effects of autoimmune diseases, entirely apart from the pain they also cause. Sleep is both rare and dear these days, and three of the last four nights have been notably lacking in it.
What it does do is give me a chance to observe the night skies, and there is no better time for that here than fall. The air is so clear that it shows one stars that normally go unseen, entirely unknown; indeed, the clarity of the air is such that it burns lungs and steals breath, should one be outside in it in the very late or very early hours. And last night produced a remarkable show indeed.
As I stared out the window just before going to bed, I saw a flash of red lightning in the apparently cloudless sky to the northeast, just east of Lobo Peak. I’d never seen such a thing, didn’t even know that it was possible, so I had to look it up. Sure enough, red lightning is indeed a thing, albeit vanishingly rare: It’s more often known as a sprite, a nod, apparently to its perception as something mischievous. It was one quick flash, a filament-thin W shape manifest in crimson with silvery-gold ends and surrounding glow. Since the deepening of the drought as our climate descends further into collapse, it’s not only the soil and the waters that are changing; we have had a sharp uptick in ball lightning, instead of our more usual bolts, and by that I don’t mean the “ball lightning” of the Wikipedia definition, but ordinary thunderstorm-accompanying lightning that manifests in ball shapes with bolts emanating out of them. Our first real manifestation of it came in the still-dark morning hours of a morning in early December some three years ago, and it was as breathtakingly beautiful as it was terrifying. Only that thunderstorm did not deliver rain, but snow and ice and punishingly literal gale-force winds that tore apart everything in its path not nailed down [and some things that were, as well].
Witnessing the red lightning phenomenon seemed gift enough last night, but shortly thereafter, as I lay in bed, I saw a silvery-green fireball streak across the sky from west/southwest to east/northeast. It was a remarkably large shooting star, its tail separated slightly from the fireball itself, so that two separate segments seem to arc through the night in tandem. We call them shooting stars, but modern science, of course, calls them meteors, and late summer into early fall here often present us with a clear view of those that occur in annual showers. This one, though, was a lone actor, and its appearance somehow seemed more valuable for that.
I returned to my failed efforts at slumber, and only dropped off a quarter of an hour or so after three o’clock . . . only to be awakened five minutes later by the dogs demanding to go out, the better to chase and bark at whatever they might have heard. Irritated now beyond description, I got up and herded them to the door to the deck, letting them out with my customary admonition to stick around and not go anywhere. And as I did so, I caught a glimpse of deep flame orange in the western sky.
It was the waxing gibbous moon, setting for the night. despite not yet being full, it’s already clearly a harvest moon; it was descending onto a bed of low banded clouds above the horizon, as near and big and pure orange as Linus’s erstwhile Great Pumpkin. It looked close enough to touch, but more than that, it seemed bigger and closer than I’ve almost ever seen it in a lifetime of watching its patterns, and the color was so brilliant and deep it seemed less than real somehow. The color was probably in no small part due to the clouds catching its fall from the sky, and from the smoke pall coming from the terrible fire in California now. But here, at least, the air still seemed perfectly clear save for those clouds that held it, floating, and much as I regretted the interruption to my one short, failed chance at sleep, I was glad to have witnessed it all the same.
These are among fall’s greatest gifts, manifest in the medicine of the autumn skies: when the intersection between our world and others seems sharper, bringing us closer; when light and shadow dance together in the day and our world rests at angles to the night.
Today’s featured masterwork embodies these gifts, this medicine, in truly spectacular form. It’s a cuff wrought in boldly classic form, cut wide and deeply incised with its own great sweeping angles, an homage to the Indigenous interpretations fo the Art Deco period of a century past. It’s set with an old stone of remarkable beauty and character, an unusual material that captures the red of the lightning and the plum-black shades of night. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
At Angles to the Night Cuff Bracelet
The fire of the setting sun and the clouds of the gathering storm move at angles to the night, ceding space the violet skies here, drawing a veil across moon and stars there. With this extraordinary new Art Deco cuff, Wings pays tribute to sun and storm and fall of dark, all in the elegantly geometric lines and spaces of the Art Deco styles of a century past. The band is wrought of a medium-weight gauge of sterling silver, cut classically wide and hand-scored down either edge to form a pair of narrow borders. Between each border and edge, alternating arcs like clouds and crescent moons trace the slender space; in between the borders, long, elegant, deeply incised straight lines are scored freehand, an echo of old Deco architectural lines. At either end, above lines meeting in a low point, a single diamond shape, an Eye of Spirit, is stamped at the center, repoussé-fashion, its center rising in convex relief from the band’s surface. The focal at the center is formed of a very old cabochon cut into an oblong rectangular shape, rounded on the corners and set into a hand-made low-profile bezel with a backing flanged at top and bottom, the extended edges saw-cut and scalloped freehand and stamped in radiant motifs. The stone itself is of unknown origin, but we reliably believe it to be orbicular sugilite in quartz, shades of plum and violet whorled with wine-tinted reds and bits of white cloud. As an old stone, its surface is relatively unrefined, polished but with pitting and natural texture that testify to its age and lack of synthetic treatment. Band is 6″ long by 1-3/8″ wide; setting is 2″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; what we reliably believe to be [old] orbicular sugilite in quartz
$1,700 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The band is a marvel, solid sterling silver cut classically wide, big and bold and yet lightweight enough to be comfortable, and easily adjusted. Its corners are rounded, all edges filed silky smooth, and the scorework and stampwork that adorns it is breathtaking.
All of the silverwork is freehand, no stencils, no power tools, just Wings’s hands holding hammer and stamp. The border is scored using a single short chisel-end stamp, creating a fine, deep edge all the way around; in between, the bold, sweeping lines are scored in the same way. Wings designed their pattern to leave plenty of negative space, so that the silver catches the light; it gives the band an almost architectural look and feel.
Small arcs, like clouds and light, edge the border scorework on all sides. At either end, single diamond-shaped Eyes of Spirit are held in spare scorework frames, as though suspended in the sky. Each diamond is formed using repoussé stampwork techniques [from the reverse], so the center of each rises in sharply textural relief above the surrounding silver.
And then there is the focal.
The silverwork is similarly spare and elegant: a simple low-profile bezel, no scalloped or serrated edges, to allow the stone to speak. Its backing extends at either end into a scalloped pattern stamped with three central radiant arcs, their own geometric lines an homage to the Art Deco period. The smaller outer arcs at either end are overlaid with tiny starbursts, beads formed by hand of sterling silver ingot, stamped in an old-style star motif, then soldered securely atop the corners of the bezel backing.
It’s the perfect framing for a stone that seems a natural homage to the hours between dusk and dawn. It’s an oblong cabochon, one that’s been in Wings’s private collection for decades, the natural stone polished but with its organic textures still perceptible. We believe it to be old orbicular sugilite, an unusual manifestation of a stone that more often shows itself in deep, sometimes shimmering purples. It’s a mineral that’s found in many places on the planet, including this land mass, and it sometimes shows itself in marbled shades of violet and deep red.
Rarely, it will manifest in an orbicular pattern, meaning that there are circular [i.e., “orb-like”] patterns in the stone itself. You can see some of that shape in the places where the colors come together, from a plum so dark its nearly black to violet to deep mulberry red to lighter shades of lilac and icy white that appear to be quartz matrix, likely from the host rock from which it was originally extracted.
there are other possibilities, of course: purpurite, richterite, purple and red jaspers merged and melded together, some combination of them all. Whatever its actual origins, it’s an extraordinary specimen, one that seems to hold within it the flowering beauty of the darker hours, the banding of an earth and sky at angles to the night.
And it’s one that’s perfect for the bold cuff on which it rests, the whole equally perfect for this season: when light and dark conspire to deliver the medicine of the autumn skies.
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