It’s another beautiful day, the morning sun’s sharp brilliance transformed into a warm glow courtesy of pollen haze and a few trailing luminous white clouds. The grass is already lush and tall, near all the trees leafed out, and at this early hour, the air is almost perfectly still, a gently breeze riffling only the uppermost leaves of the aspens.
In the absence of the water for upstream, we shall need the clouds, and soon. But for this moment, the world shimmers like some new and otherworldly land, and we shall appreciate it while it lasts.
We were talking last night about our newly altered patterns this year: differences that seem beneficial and unattributable to the ravages of climate change. Our own small world here is healthier than it has been in years, and the wild creatures seem to know that better than anyone. The butterflies arrived early; so did the honeybees; and now the hummingbirds. But more than that, it’s the overwintering and seeming permanence of the entire goldfinch clan, the return, six months early, of the siskins, and the presence of the tiny kinglets too. We have never been able to walk outside to the lilting chorus of one hundred tiny birds atop feeder and nearest aspen as we do daily now.
The pandemic is a crisis, and for our peoples more than most, and yet, the earth is healing as a result. Of course, the crisis for our peoples is one entirely man-made; it’s a function and continuation of the campaigns of genocide begun more than half a millennium ago and waged unceasing since. We need not be at any greater risk than any other population, and in a truly civil society, we would not be. But colonialism is savagery unleashed beneath a banner quartered for “politics” and “law” and “respectability,” only its fourth quarter devoted to the military and paramilitary violence of the enforcement of white supremacy. There is no civility in it, but doublespeak has always been its means of communication.
And it is an ill wind that has blown these forces back toward us once again, but there are other winds abroad upon the land now, too. The earth’s slowing has permitted us a glimpse, perhaps, of how our world genuinely used to be — not faulty memories of “good old days” that were only good for the dominant population, nor of Hollywood whitewashing in every sense of the term, but of how our world, Indigenous and indigenous, once functioned in health and harmony: when the winds did not drive, hard and constant, from the southwest daily at gale force; when the land was not near-devoid of tiny songbirds and a green embrace to hold them.
This is this place as Wings remembers it from his childhood, and oddly enough (or perhaps not oddly at all), it reminds me increasingly of my own, in a land far to the north and east of here. Both were places where the four winds maintained a balance within the sacred directions, where they worked in concert to reveal the light of a sunny spring day, and to deliver the waters of the storm when needed, too.
In a healthy world, the winds are not a burden. They may harbor trickster fantasies and commit occasional mischief, but they know their role and they mostly keep to it: while spreading pollen and light, the winds deliver the waters of life, on the surface and from the skies.
Today’s featured work embodies these elements of world and weather in both symbol and spirit. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Four Winds Cuff Bracelet
The Four Winds move and shape our world, within the storm and without. In this cuff, Wings honors their elemental power with this return to one of his own informal signature series and an old classic, traditional Native style of silverwork. It begins with a beautifully simple band of heavy, solid nine-gauge sterling silver, hammered by hand on both sides in the old way, with hundreds of strikes of a silversmith’s hammer, to create a spectacularly refractive surface. On the inner band, a long line of directional arrows traces the length of the center, some consecutive, others reversed, still others pointing outside their slender line, representing the wind’s own changes of direction, sometimes capricious, sometimes intentional. On the band’s surface, its sole adornment consists of four square bezel-set lapis lazuli cabochons set next to each other at the center, each stone lightly domed and the brilliant cobalt blue of deep waters and stormy skies, each represent one of the winds of the Four Sacred Directions. Ends and edges are all filed by hand, with each end rounded and smoothed, also by hand, for comfort. The band is 6″ long and 6/16″ across; each lapis cabochon is 6/16″ square (dimensions approximate). Side views and a view of the inner band shown below.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$1,675 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The four square lapis cabochons, the extraordinary blues of the storm, draw the eye, but what makes this cuff is the heavy hammered silver of the band. Its surface ripples like the waters, shimmers like the rays of the light. It catches that light and holds it close, sending it back out into the world to embrace the blues of wind and water, sky and storm that dance across its center arc.
Our blues of this morning are paler, more cornflower than cobalt. That will change with the passing of the day . . . and with the week, as well: Rains are forecast for week’s end and the early days of the next.
For this moment, the winds remain no more than gentle breezes, welcoming, comforting, nurturing of the nascent world within their embrace. But while they are at work today, carrying the pollen and the light, we remember that the winds deliver the waters of life, too — and we remember to give thanks.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
