It is a beautiful day, clouds dark blue and lowering, backlit by the silver of the winter sun, and the promise of heavy weather on the way. The tree is up, if not yet decorated; that will come this afternoon. And finally, there is absolutely nowhere that we need to go today, no errands to run, no tasks beyond our customary chores.
At last, it finally feels like the holidays.
This was, I think, our most successful holiday season ever, sales-wise — a rarity anyway in recent years, but positively stupefying in the tortured economy of a second year of pandemic. We are blessed, certainly, and profoundly grateful for what this season has allowed us to do, but more grateful still that we are finally getting a chance to slow down enough to do some of it. We have maintained a punishing pace for two months and more, seven days a week, in the midst of some of the land’s most drought-ridden weather, and we are as tired now as the Earth herself.
It will be a blessing of nearly indescribable proportions to be able to stay at home by the fire for the next several days, focused only on our daily tasks, all while wrapped in the beauty of an old-fashioned winter storm.
I, of course, could not be happier: I was born a child of the storm in both weather and place, and my spirit is never more at peace than when the clouds roil the skies, delivering them of their medicine of rain or snow. While most folks look for the light after the storm, I have always sought the illuminating mysteries of the storm itself.
Yes, I meant that word: illuminating. The storm shows us a world we mostly do not perceive in the hard bright gaze of the sun. The shade and shadow of the clouds neutralize the glare, defining outlines sharply and revealing gradients of color and light that unfiltered sun renders invisible to the human eye. And the lowering clouds make me feel safe, as though the skies are enfolding me in their embrace, held fast while the rain washes over me and the snow cleanses every surface for rebirth.
This week’s featured #ThrowbackThursday work embodies this magic in all of its haunting power and beauty. It’s a very special one, particularly close to my heart: one of the seven bangle bracelets that Wings created for me as a gift for my birthday just over two years ago. The number does indeed have special significance, and he set each of the seven bangles with seven tiny round cabochons, one type of gem per bracelet: turquoise, aquamarine, coral, carnelian, amber opal, and iolite. I love them all and I wear them routinely — always in the full group of seven, never splitting them up. But of the stones, as is entirely predictable, there is one clear favorite, and despite my love for my birthstone, opal, it is not that one.
No, the one that speaks to my spirit in ways the others cannot is the bangle set with seven tiny iolite stones.
Why? Besides being manifest in that flawless intense blue that is my favorite color, iolite is a stone in the shade of the storm.
In this case, though, it’s not just the stones; it’s also the pattern of the band. This, like the opal in the full set, is formed of sterling silver pattern wire, which is an industry terms of art for molded ingot formed in long, slender segments. These strands of “wire” are relatively thin and delicate in terms of width, barely more than a sixteenth of an inch across. But they are very nearly as thick as they are wide, a solid and substantial gauge of sterling silver molded, in this instance, with a surface pattern that evokes that threshold straddling the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods, both personal favorites of mine. But this design holds another gift.
The flowing pattern incised into its surface resembles two very particular spirits that hold meaning for me (and in some contexts, for each other): one is that being we call Serpent; the other is the First Medicine, water. Here, those flowing lines linked by deep translucent pools of perfect violet blue? Are mystery, magic, and medicine in one.
Of course, that’s only a small fraction of their significance for me. The aspect closet to my heart is that Wings created them for me, the complete set, fully envisioned and actualized in a style and spirit that holds such deeply personal meaning for me. And it seemed fitting, on this day that feels, in a very real sense, like the first full day of our own holiday season, to feature a work so close to our spirits.
For it is a work of medicine, make no mistake, one that holds all the magic of the season and all the illuminating mysteries of the storm to come.
And now, the wind is rising; the sun has turned the clouds to the south the deepest of blues. By tonight, we may have winter weather after all.
~ 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.
