The storm is here.
We received the faintest dusting late last night, then clearing skies through the dark hours. By dawn, though, the snow had returned, and in the last few hours it has launched itself into a whirling dance, its direction shifting one hundred and eighty degrees in a matter of minutes.
It’s a fine, cold, dry snow, the kind that the wind catches and whips into a blizzard, piling drifts at steep angles around everything in its path, driving hard on the horizontal to create white-out conditions. This same snow portends an equally steep drop in temperatures soon, and it will be much colder in the days to come.
It won’t last long, of course; more snow is forecast for both tomorrow and Thursday, but by next weekend, the mercury will be climbing again into unseasonally warm spring temperatures.
For now, though, we are enjoying the several inches of snow that have already fallen, and the prospect of more to come. And our small world here is wrapped in the serenity of the storm, a stillness and solitude that only comes with the snow’s ability to muffle the outside world into silence. At moments like this, it seems possible to hear the Earth herself breathe, to feel the rise and fall of the beat of her heart — a moment when we are granted a glimpse and just the slightest entrée into that other space she occupies, in the space of the spirits, where the medicine flows with the fall of the snow in the silence.
It’s a world manifest in today’s featured work, an old traditional-style cuff wrought entirely freehand, one itself created of and across liminal spaces. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
In the Space of the Spirits Cuff Bracelet
The storm dances and the First Medicine flows in the space of the spirits. Wings summons storm and rain and sacred space together into one wide shining band of hand-wrought sterling silver. Each edge of the band is hand-scored in a single deeply stamped line to create twinned borders. Within those edges, traditional thunderhead symbols point inward in a repeating pattern from either side, each one impossibly even, each throwing the negative space into sharp relief. Down the center, thunderhead symbols were initially stamped in a conjoined pattern, creating a motif of sacred space that points to all directions, then the silver within was excised, freehand, ajouré-fashion, to create an internal band of negative space that holds the mysteries of storm and spirit. At either terminal, a flowing water pattern sends the gift of the rain to its rounded, hand-smoothed ends. Cuff measures 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Sterling silver
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This work, from the very moment of its creation, has been one that inhabits a place on my so-called “master list” of favorites. The cutwork is pure mastery; the freehand stampwork equally pure artistry. The shaping, so delicate and subtle as to be nearly imperceptible, gives it perfect form and flow.
And then there is the symbolism: thunderheads, kiva steps, sacred directions, sacred space.
It is true that in our way, our whole world is sacred space . . . and also true that it is not separate, not isolated or removed, from the world we inhabit every day. Ours is a world braided together, just like the hoop of existence itself, eternally linked with our ancestors and with our children yet unborn, this very ordinary and wholly tangible world also intertwined with the worlds we cannot see.
On days like this, it seems possible to catch a glimpse of them, to feel their presence just there, off to the side out of the corner of the eye, faintly perceptible if just out of reach. The storm makes other worlds not merely possible, but necessary, a space of the spirits, where the medicine flows with the fall of the snow.
It’s a medicine — more than one form of medicine, actually — our world needs now, and we are grateful for its gift . . . for the snow, for the stillness, for the sound of the world breathing in the silence.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2022; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
