Spot: the energy of releasing pressure through a crack. It is a spattering, as well as the spit or spatter that carries that energy into material form and remains as a living, embodied past: a spot. The term was first observed in ancient mining, in which fragile, layered rocks were split with a spade. What the spade spoke to the rock, or drove it to speak, was splatter. Once this energy was known, it was applied to blood, where it remains, as blood spatter, or, in Shakespeare’s time, in Lady Macbeth’s “damn spot,” a horse breeding term. When the body breaks apart and energy that should be held within breaks out locally, it is known as a spot, or a splash where purity and wholeness are missing. Today, the energy is widely recognized in its fluid qualities, with all its spots and spritzers, and all its spit and sputter, and in the hole it makes in uniformity. What was a an eye or a mouth is now seen as that which is missing, as focus has shifted from wholes to holes.

Spotted Dogwood Leaf