The act of dividing any taut material that holds any embedded kinetic energy, or of marking any continuous material holding such energy, is done by engaging it with continued motion increasing in pressure from a hard, sharp material until it breaks its energy bonds and then to use that energy to run onward with the motion (and the breakage).

Scarred Rocks, Buffalo Eddy on the Pik’dunin 6,000 years BPE +

This is a scar. It is danced in the mouth with an ‘s’, to show a steady initial state, to which is added the sharp break of a k, which opens the mouth (or the material), which is then given breath with a half-open throat that continues into the run of an ‘r’.

It is also the sound of cutting a hide or a ligament, a tarp or a taut sheet of paper, or even of making notches in hard material such as bone or metal. As such, it is the voice of a hand, and one of its words, performed by the voice. Both the hand, mentored by a skilled carver, which relives and repeats the feel of the action, and the mind, through the mouth and the ear, remember (remake the form of) the original moti, and so its energy lives on and can be repeated over and over. Scars are remarkably enduring for a quick action.

Petroglyph, Ozette.

Scarring (or scarification) within scarring.

The word for this process when it is digested as “art” is “scarification” and even “to scarify”, but the action is always a “scar” and, when repeated, “scarring”. It is always a recording of a motion. This action is not exclusively human and takes many forms in many circumstances and materials. In human apprehension, however, it always closes with the biting off and tearing of the clamped down tongue on the back teeth at the end of the ‘r,’ with the air running out beneath it and filling the mouth like rushing water. Accordingly, a:

Scarf: is a thin scar from a broader cloth (ie a cloak), used to wrap around the neck, with the addition of the soft wrap of the “f”, which dances the wrap around the neck. Likewise, a:

Skirt: is a cut-off gown (or a similar shortened piece of any material, such as the skirt around a house.)

Skerry: is a scar cut from the sea by a sharp knife (knife-ridge) of rock; to

Scarf: is to eat in quick, tearing bites, like a wolf.

In dancing a scar (which, because it is an action, is a scarring), a mouth must repeat the action, making the mouth temporarily a scar itself, first as an opening in air, then as its closing through hard binding tissue (a tense tongue) which remembers it. It is, in other words, a new form of scarring, called:

Curt: or quick, cut-off speech.

Every scar comes about by an action, and leaves a gap. These are called a:

Painted Chasm, Secwepemc Territory

A pretty big scar scraped out by ice and meltwater.

Scrape: or scraping. They are a scar in process, either a light scar or one as yet not closed off with tissue. Note how the closing off of the “r” in this dance precedes the opening of the “ah” breath, which has shifted to the echoing chamber at the roof of the mouth, as a long “ai”, in repetition of its glancing nature. It helps, of course, that it is onomatopoeic. This is the sound of scarring stone:

S…c…r…ai…pppp.

Understandably enough, it

Sheers: (the sound of tense material breaking away) off a

Scrap: which is the digging sound of a short scrape, in other words the

Shard: of a hard scrape sounding as it splits away and falls on a pile of waste material. It is material in the shape of a scar, but is the removed tissue, not the replacement material.

Because these energies are always repeated (and repeatable), a cliff made by scarring or sheering is said to be:

Sheer: often explained by “drop” or “fall” although the sheer is a word of the Earth itself, yet drop and fall is what you will do if you come up to a sheer (edge); you will drop or fall away from life and steadiness, in what is called sheer terror, unless you stay within the boundaries of edge energy and edge along it. Similarly, a cloth that allows an eye to cut through it is said to be sheer as well. An eye like that, seeing what is otherwise veiled by material or distance is said to be:

Sharp: as is the pencil that can sketch such a sight. It is the energy of sharding, given to a shard and which is then able to repeat the original scar (and make other shards and sharps from it). A spear point is such a sharp.

Mountain Goat and Kid Above Keremeos Creek

Sharp features among the sharp shards.

A sharp tongue has the same ability to cut and transfer the cut, in its case to the mind, or memory, which in the world of earth-based humans is the self.

By speaking of these energies (or any other, for that matter), we

Share: or break a portion (a shard) off. When doing this to make a communicative object in three-dimensional material, we

Shape: or scoop it.

It is at this point in the grammar of Earth Language that a human dancing it with mouth and ear, that is with the mind that is ear and eye speaking to each other, which is attention, leads off into the whole word hoard of shaping and fate, which I will explore on another day. As we get ready, do note that these flows of energy are continuous and flow into and out of each other. It is a grammar of transformation, not one which applies specific meanings to each point of the dance. In other words, all the highlighted words above are

the same word going through its transformations

and linking to other transformational openings, rivers and floods along the way, in a flow of water, earth, air and sound.

The Ouregon flowing south from its gorge.