We awakened to cloudy skies this morning, heavy with the promise of snow. The forecast finally insists that we shall have at least rain this afternoon, but the clouds are only a dusting now against the blue, patchy puffs of gray and white heading steadily eastward.
We got a flurry or three last night, and I mean that mostly literally — the kind of precipitation that allows you to stand outside in it and remain essentially dry, able to feel each discrete flake as it touches your skin, several seconds apart. The peaks this morning were more fortunate, if not by much; there is a faint new dusting of snow visible on two of them, although the rest remain the same rocky evergreen as yesterday.
Supposedly we have a decent chance of weather forecast for this place over the next three to four days, but we know better than to depend on even those promising predictions anymore. they too often end like this, with perhaps only a smattering of snow or rain at still-higher elevations, or nothing at all, the clouds stubbornly withholding until they have cleared the range, able to gain strength and speed as though go barreling along the impossibly flat plains on the other side.
And so as the sun overtakes the storm, we wait, and watch, and hope, and pray, but we assume nothing. This is a new world now from the one we have always known, and it requires more from us than mere passive appreciation of whatever comes. Our cosmos may indeed be composed of worlds of dust and light, but our own earth has been forced to wear the descriptor much more literally now, and we shall have both to adapt and to make up for what she can no longer create on her own.
Today’s featured work embodies these realities, as well as the greater cosmic avatar; indeed, they bear the very name. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Worlds of Dust and Light Earrings
Our cosmologies teach of multiple worlds that inhabit the same universe, our own and those inhabited by the spirits. Wings calls both into being with these earrings, worlds of dust and light that exist by virtue of the elemental powers of the cosmos, the dust of creation and the light of the first dawn. Each dangling drop is formed around a central free-form cabochon of natural turquoise, its telltale earthy browns and bronzes scattered across pale greens and blues an indicator that it was likely pulled from beneath the ground of Colorado. Each cabochon is set into a smooth hand-filed bezel and trimmed with twisted silver; beneath each setting extends a small flange, hand-drilled with three tiny round holes. A fringe of silvery light cascades from each flange, three long elegant strands of fine sterling silver wire per earring. The drops are held fast by sterling silver wires attached via delicate silver jump rings. Each earring hangs 3-1/2″ in overall length (excluding wires); cabochons are 1-3/8″ long by 1/4″ across at the widest point; sterling silver “tassels” hang 1-7/8″ in total length (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; natural American turquoise (likely from Colorado)
$925 + shipping, handling, and insurance
These are a truly extraordinary pair, one to which the photo does little justice. They are far longer and therefore more proportional than the limitations of the image makes them appear; the sterling silver “fringes” turn them very nearly into shoulder-dusters, but tips of the fringe hanging almost to the base of the neck.
The stones, too, are a phenomenon of nature, a strikingly different form of turquoise but no less natural for that. The supplier could not identify this lot beyond “natural American turquoise,” but the stippling effect of the matrix and the color gradient, from amber at the bottom to a rich robin’s-egg blue at the top with all the shades of sky and seafoam in between, suggests Colorado. the pale and mottled blues with plenty of gold and the stippling, dust-like effect of the matrix is found in some of the material that comes from the southern part of that state.
Taken together, the blues and greens and golds do produce the effect of stardust, shimmering in the light — all the small swirling motes of life that make up the worlds of our existence, physical, spiritual, worlds of past and future, of memory and dreams. They remind us that change is a constant in our cosmos and our cosmologies too: that a world so different now is no less beautiful, nor should it bend to outsized human expectations; instead, our task is to adapt, and to ensure its well-being along with our own.
These are, after all, the days of prophecy fulfilled. We are playing the parts our ancestors left for us, and there is much to be done. We have, already, one world of dust and light; perhaps before these next days are done, we shall have at least a dusting of snow, as well. We are ready to welcome it, to use it wisely and well.
~ 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.
