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"A Star in My Vision"
A love story about two earth beings, shone upon by the light of the Universe, their love reflected by the glow of the stars above...
Manidoo-giizis (Moon of the Spirit; January 22), 2019
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| Wedding ring set "Like a Star in My Vision." Click on the image to view details of the set. |
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Welcome back in my Storytelling Lodge
Boozhoo! Biindigen miinawaa nindaadizooke wigamigong; enji-zaagi'iding miinawaa gikendaasong. Ninga-aadizooke noongom giizhigad! Hello! Welcome back in my Storytelling Lodge where legends and teaching stories are told. Let’s tell a zaagi'idiwin aadizookaan (sacred love story) today!
This blog tale is another episode, the fourth in a series named “Star Stories.” The series features teaching stories that encompass the unique worldview and cultural perspective of the Anishinaabe Peoples.
About love and separation
The story I will tell you today features a set of wedding rings; click on the above image to view details of the rings. The design and story of the rings as well as the song that accompanies the story are inspired by a woman I recently met and who stole my heart. She arrived on a big bird that came flying from a faraway land in the East called Israel. We met for a short period of time and then she had to return to her country. Although our time together was brief, her beauty and moral bravery touched me in unspeakable ways, words fall short to express what I feel for her. Only the stars high above understand the depth of the love that lives in our hearts and the scope of the feelings that we harbor for each other. Only they see how hard it is for us to be separated again by time and distance. We are stars in each other's eyes, bonded forever, together, yet also beyond each other's grasp...
The rings
The design of these wedding rings, which I titled Winaagozi Dibishkoo Anang (“Like a Star in My Eyes”), is inspired by the pictographic outline drawing style of the Anishinaabe and Cree Medicine painters - more commonly called Woodland Art painters.
The magic outline of Nibaad Misaabe, or the Sleeping Giant, a rock formation that juts out on Lake Superior and characterizes the body of water that was called Animikii-wiikwedong (Thunder Bay) by my Anishinaabe ancestors, has for years been a main source of design inspiration for me.
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The red gold bottom part of the wedding rings featuring flowing yellow gold outlines – showing two bodies including faces “in profile,” which I modeled after the Sleeping Giant - represent two lovers who once sprang from the earth’s womb and now become one with each other - and with the Earthmother herself. Thus earth and lovers become a symbolic unity. While the lower part of the wedding rings’ surfaces symbolizes the fertile earth, the grayish white color of the top half of the ring shanks, made of palladium white gold, as well as the yellow gold star figures in the center represent the night sky lit by the glowing light of the stars of the Universe.
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| Click on the image to view details of the ring set |
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The red gold bottom part of the wedding rings featuring flowing yellow gold outlines – showing two bodies including faces “in profile,” which I modeled after the Sleeping Giant - represent two lovers who once sprang from the earth’s womb and now become one with each other - and with the Earthmother herself. Thus earth and lovers become a symbolic unity. While the lower part of the wedding rings’ surfaces symbolizes the fertile earth, the grayish white color of the top half of the ring shanks, made of palladium white gold, as well as the yellow gold star figures in the center represent the night sky lit by the glowing light of the stars of the Universe.
The song
Dibishkoo biidaanikwag, w’gii abi-ezhaa
Dibishkoo waabaanikwag, aabiji-maajaa.
N'gashkendam w'gaa abi-izhaad
N'gashkendam w'gaa ago-maajaad.
N'gii magawig
n'gaa abi naanig na?
W’naagozi dibishkoo anang
W’waasa wendaagozi dibishkoo anang.
W’waasa wendaagozi dibishkoo anang.
("Like a cloud has he come and gone
Like a cloud drifted away forever.
Sad am I since he came
Sad am I since he's gone.
Like a cloud drifted away forever.
Sad am I since he came
Sad am I since he's gone.
Now he has found my love
Will he return for my love?
Will he return for my love?
Like a star in my eyes
Like a star beyond my grasp, my love.")
- An Ojibwe love song
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Giiwenh. So goes the story about the Sleeping Giant wedding rings; so goes the tale about the love that I feel for a beautiful woman who came from a faraway land and touched my heart before she returned...so goes the song sung by this brave woman from the East who feels sadbecause she and her lover, who lives in the West, live far apart... Miigwech gibizindaw noongom mii dash gidaadizookoon. Thank you for listening to my storytelling today. Giga-waabamin wayiiba, I hope to see you again soon...
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My name is Zhaawano Giizhik. As an American artist and jewelry designer currently living in the Netherlands. I like to draw on the oral and pictorial traditions of my Ojibwe Anishinaabe ancestors from the American Great Lakes area. For this I call on my manidoo-minjimandamowin, or "Spirit Memory"; which means I try to remember the knowledge and the lessons of my ancestors. The MAZINAAJIMOWINAN or ‘‘pictorial spirit writings’’ - which are rich with symbolism and have been painted throughout history on rocks and etched on other sacred items such as copper and slate, birch bark and animal hide - were a form of spiritual as well as educational communication that gave structure and meaning to the cosmos. Many of these sacred pictographs or petroforms – some of which are many, many generations old - hide in sacred locations where the manidoog (spirits) reside, particularly in those mystic places near the coastline where the sky, the earth, the water, the underground and the underwater meet.
Like a star beyond my grasp, my love.")
- An Ojibwe love song
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So the story goes...
Giiwenh. So goes the story about the Sleeping Giant wedding rings; so goes the tale about the love that I feel for a beautiful woman who came from a faraway land and touched my heart before she returned...so goes the song sung by this brave woman from the East who feels sadbecause she and her lover, who lives in the West, live far apart... Miigwech gibizindaw noongom mii dash gidaadizookoon. Thank you for listening to my storytelling today. Giga-waabamin wayiiba, I hope to see you again soon...
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