We are on day three of disruptive appointments, and day three of no Internet in the process. Despite the fact that the pandemic has made greater introverts of us than ever, the latter is by far the greater disruption to us now.
It’s nothing to do with the yesterday’s storm or today’s cold or the trickster wind of the whole week, no: This is directly attributable to the local telecom company’s misinstallation of it four years ago. But this is the norm, and so we wait.
And wait.
And wait.
I noted yesterday that one of Grandmother Spider’s attributes, one of the teachings she is known to offer, is the quality of patience. When all of one’s work is ground to a halt, one’s entire business effectively shuttered indefinitely, yet again, for the dozenth time or more for something that was completely avoidable?
Patience is hard come by now.
Of course, it’s not as though, like her, we preside over a web that will bring what is wanted directly to us; that enviable position is held by the public utility, which continues to collect exorbitant amounts of money from us monthly for what theoretically is uninterrupted service but in fact is too often its opposite.
And there is, of course, no storm today, not that that should make the slightest difference to underground cables anyway. No, this day is all blue skies, cold and clear, emptied of such few clouds as dared to try to form by the fury of a north wind that slices straight to the bone. There is a faint dusting of snow on the peaks, but we can expect that to vanish in the days to come, leaving only bare turn and barer branches, the abandoned spirits of an earth apparently eager to leave autumn behind and surrender to another drought-ridden winter.
What are we to make of this world, so riven by destruction and death? How, when our charge is to weave a better world for our children, when the threads left to us are frayed by colonialism, infected by contagion and other toxins, unraveled directly from the robes of genocide?
Wings and I say often that the first medicine is the water, but even that is vanishing rapidly now. And yet, perhaps there is a lesson here, between the old ways of stewarding it and the example set for us by this grandmotherly weaver, another soul, like those for whom the bell next week will toll, due soon to disappear for another winter.
It’s a lesson embodied, too, in today’s featured work, one wrought in an old and classic traditional style that honors not merely the medicine but the old ways of managing it. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Weaving Water Cuff Bracelet
Here at Red Willow, working with the First Medicine is a process of weaving water, drawing down rain and river alike to flow across the land in silvery threads, taken up by the earth on its way to pool in the pond at the end of the ditch. Wings brings together pool and process alike in this cuff, a silky, silvery band of woven strands meeting in the middle at a lake of pure cobalt. The band is formed of two substantial strands of sterling silver pattern wire, possessed of an elegant Art Deco sensibility and molded into a scored lines with braided overlays at intervals, the strands spaced gently apart at the center and narrowing to meet at either end. At the top of the band’s surface, an extraordinary oval cabochon of electric blue lapis lazuli, adrift with wisps of white and whorls of shimmering gold and silver pyrite, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with its own delicate braid of twisted silver. Band is 6″ long; each strand is 1/4″ across; cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Side views shown below.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli
$1,100 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is, as I said above, an old style: simple; spare; stripped to its elements, a singe stone and two strands of silver. But what a stone, and what strands!
I have written at some length, here and in other places, about the lessons manifest in this work. Here, people like Wings grew up learning stewardship of land and water as fundamentally as they learned to pray — indeed, for Wings, at least, the work itself is its own prayer. It’s a form of care that would be mostly unrecognizable anywhere else on this land mass now, but here, agriculture is done mostly in the old way, and the includes the process of irrigation. Colonial populations love to take credit for it, but the truth is that the people who belong to this land were already engaged in complex and large-scale forms of agriculture centuries before anyone in Europe ever thought that there might be more earth than that which ended with its own Atlantic coast.
And theirs is a process that I have come to think of as weaving, too: not of thread, or silk, or wool, or even beads, but of water, and of land. Clear the ditch and open a channel; bring down the water; send it out in its own threads upon the land, criss-crossing the earth until the two elements together form a blanket of their own. Walk the ditches; survey the land; wade into the icy stream and turn the earth the old way, by hand with a shovel. Open this dam; close that one off; create a new one here and braid the streams together with the soil until all of the land is an irrigated web, fallow and ready for planting — not a web to trap unwary prey, but one with all the healing power of a blanket, ready to warm the earth and nurture seeds into fruition.
It is a practice and process of the warmer months, one that would already over by now anyway, as would the majority of its harvest. These days are instead devoted to letting the land rest, as fall counts down the calendar to its marking of the transition of souls and beyond. There will be some preparation required of us before winter sets in fully, but for now, and through those long cold months, the operative word will in fact be patience: for the land to rest, to breathe, to slumber and heal, to be reborn. Yesterday’s brief rain and the alpine dusting of snow will help with that, as will every storm that follows.
For now, the threads need to be unraveled, straightened once more, made clean and strong and healthy before braiding anew. And when they are ready, we must be, too, to weave a better world for the generations yet to come.
~ 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.
