Nearly all the snow is gone, only a few remnant patches left in areas that get little direct sunlight. There is sun today, but also increasing cloud cover — nothing that will deliver any precipitation at our level, but a beautiful darkening mix of slate shades all the same. The contrast between the fire-red maple and the slate blue sky, both lit up periodically by the rays of the sun breaking through the clouds, is breathtaking.
Speaking of breath, it feels as though the earth here is exhaling at last, one long extended sigh of relief at receiving the recent moisture. It matches my own, although my sigh is more complex: part pain and exasperation, as my body attempts to navigate the effects of this third dose of the vaccine; part relief that the worst of the fever and other symptoms seem to be fading just the tiniest bit now.
The last day and a half have been unadulterated misery, and yet I know that it’s barely a fraction of what I would feel were I to contract the coronavirus. Knowing that, I cannot conceive of voluntarily putting oneself at such risk unnecessarily. And it reminds me that there are times when actions are required of us that cause us short-term discomfort, if we are to build a life of health and harmony.
It’s a lesson, too, in how linear thinking can be stunted, distorted out of all logic or truth: We are conditioned to avoid discomfort and pain, and too often choose the path of least resistance even knowing that it will bring us far greater pain later. Colonialism has always exploited short-term convenience for long-term control, and the behaviors we are seeing now among that population are merely one more manifestation that worldview.
All this perhaps sounds far afield from this week’s featured #ThrowbackThursday work, shown in the image above, but it’s not. The design of this piece embodies the way in which our cultures refuse to be constrained by linear thought or by the internal logics of colonialism; it shows life as filled with sources of guidance and an array of paths, all not merely leading to but traveling inexorably along the good road that has been given to us: the circle that leads us home.
Today’s featured work is a manifestation of circles and paths alike, and the directional guides that show us the way. It’s a work that dates back just over a decade, a throwback to June of 2011. It was wrought in a classic style, formed of heavy-gauge sterling silver half-round wire, with a twist: the band was hand-milled to flatten out the very top, creating a slender plateau that ran its entire length. Millwork displaces the silver, and so the sloping sides became a little fuller, and also a little more sharply angled, than they would otherwise have been.
At the very center of the top of the band, Wings stamped a single star, this one a basic five-pointed motif, but no less symbolic of guidance for that. On either side of the star, he stamped a series of tiny hoops, each in groups of four — a design that would have created three sets of four on each side of the central star, for a total of twenty-four.
Then he turned his attention to the sides. It’s not easy stamping irregular surfaces, and especially not when you do it all freehand, as Wings does. But such stanpwork is done before the band is shaped into the arc that will create the cuff, and for sharper angles, he uses a specialized miniature combination vise that holds the silver in place. Here, he repeated the motifs of guiding signs and sacred hoops, but placed offset from those along the top: another quartet of tiny hoops on either angled side of the central star, flanked by arrows pointing in opposite directions that aligned with the hoops along the top. He repeated the motif of four hoops at intervals along either side of the band, toward its tapered and filed ends. Then he oxidized the stampwork fairly heavily, and buffed the whole piece to a medium-high polish.
The result was a piece that spoke of many paths in one. It was also an object lesson in anti-colonial logics, that the way to harmony is one that integrates essential truths rather than seeking shortcuts around them.
In our way, being and time are not separate from each other, nor from anything else. When we follow the good road that has been laid out for us, we become a part of it; a part of the circle that leads us home.
~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.
