Everything's haunted now.

Photo copyright Aji, 2021; all rights reserved.

Moonrise last night was very much a haunted affair, fitting for the season this year, apparently. Everything's haunted now: land, sky, people, memory. We have had several tragedies locally in the space of a week, most of them apparently either not important enough for the local rag to cover or else involving people too important not to protect by refusing to cover any of it. The pandemic is spiking again, people we know, including children too young to vaccinated, have contracted it, the Pueblo is tightening its lockdown to protect the vulnerable, and still the colonizer world here refuses to do the barest minimum humanity and decency require. The state expects to have no beds for anything but COVID patients between Thanksgiving and New Year's.

No wonder the earth is ash and bone and the skies look like the world's end.

Meanwhile, the work has to get done. Wings has gone into town to give some cash help to a friend [also Indigenous] who is primary caregiver for a very young grandchild who, through other people's inexcuseable negligence, was exposed to the virus and has contracted it. This while he's busy with several pieces that will not be offered for sale but have a tight deadline, and having not been able to get any studio time yesterday. We also got a late start today because the Indian killer utility had an hour-long power outage, no explanation, phones set to deny access even to voice-mail, never mind answers, and of course no coverage of that, either. We are so buried under work right now, and I am so tired of other people's negligence costing us precious hours, never mind risking our health and safety and very lives.

Tomorrow will also be one more day of constant running, barely enough time to breathe, but then I'm hoping we settle back into something a little more routine. Yes, this is our busiest time of year, but that's the nature of what we do; from October 1st through year's end, it's 16-hour+ days, seven days a week. No breaks. And because of the shipping mess, we're in crunch time already. For those folks having us hold items, we need to get this wrapped up now because of said shipping mess. Wings has new pieces in the works, too, although at the moment he's tied up with more immediate orders; I expect that some of the new items will be available next week or the week after.

Yes, it always comes back to needing to make more sales. A lot more, because we have two years' worth of a shattered pandemic economy to make up for, by which I mean we need to gain more ground ourselves financially to be able to be sure of making it through the winter. And again, if you're planning on commissioning gifts for the holidays, DO IT NOW. [And that includes just ordinary orders for the holidays, too.] Yes, I mean NOW. We're dealing with the same supply-chain issues as everyone else, and at some point soon, Wings is going to have to get silver and stones to produce holiday inventory, and I'm hearing that the price is already spiking on the metals. More to the point of what customers care about, we also can't guarantee shipping times this year, because see above. But I've posted a ton of Wings's new work lately, and there will be more in the days and weeks to come. If I could sell one of the big works, like one of the belts, maybe I could get us on the drill list for the well that is the only thing that's going to keep this land alive. But I've got way too much to do and too few hours and other resources to do it. 

Anyway, I have GOT to continue to make sales, so links are here:

• Sales here; 
• Testimonials here; 
• Amazon wishlist here (priorities are first and foremost, the ladders, because see above, and coffee coffee coffee, which we're finding it harder and harder to get locally);
• Patreon here;
• Ko-fi here.

And if you've been contemplating a purchase? This would be a very, very good time to do it; I've got to cover all this staggering outlay somehow and get us through what's left of the year. And right now? I have no way to do it.  But there's lots of fabulous new work, so please share all of the links. 

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.