Free Ghosts by César Aira

example, corresponding
to the right-hand side, and the low to the left, or whatever. Now the
condominiums, the skyscrapers that the Nias haven’t built (negating the negation
of the unbuilt, as it were), would represent symbolism itself. From which it
could be deduced that for every building there is a corresponding
non-building. On the same principle, the natives of Madagascar make
pretty wooden models of multi-story houses, crammed with little people
and animals, which are used as toys. If those models represent anything, it is
“the children’s house,” another form of the unbuilt.
    But the Australians, what do the Australians do? How do they structure
their landscape? For a start they postulate a primal builder, whose work they
presume only to interpret: the mythical animal who was active in the
“dreamtime,” that is, a primal era, beyond verification, as the name
indicates.A time of sleep. The visible landscape is an effect
of causes that are to be found in the dreamtime. For example the snake that
dragged itself over this plain creating these undulations, etc., etc. These
“intellectual dandies,” these “spinsters,” these curious Aborigines make sure
their eyes are closed while events take place, which allows them to see places
as records of events. But what they see is a kind of dream, and they wake into a
reverie, since the real story (the snake, not the hills) happened while they
were asleep.
    The dreamtime, as giver of meaning or guarantor of the stability of
meanings, is the equivalent of language. But why did the Australian Aborigines
need an equivalent? Didn’t they already have languages? Maybe they also wanted a
hieroglyphic script, like the Egyptians, and they made it from the ground under
their feet.
    The elements of Australian geography are as simple as they are
effective: the point and the line, that’s it. As the Aborigines proceed over
plains and through forests, the point and the line are represented by the halt
and the journey. With a line and a point, a line that passes through many points
in the course of a year, frequently changing direction, they trace out a vast
drawing, the representation of destiny. But there is something very special
going on here: via the point, the precise point in space, the nomads can pass
through to the other side, like a dressmaker’s pin or needle, through to the
side of dreaming, which changes the nature of the line: the hunting or gathering
route becomes a mythic itinerary. Which adds a third dimension to the drawing of
destiny. But the passage through the point is happening all the time, since no
point is specially privileged (not even waterholes—contrary to the
anthropologists’ initial assumptions—although they serve as models for
the points of passage, which can, by rights, be found anywhere, at any point
along the line), so the food-gathering route is always taking on a
mythical significance and vice versa. There is something dreamlike about the
points that provide a view of the other side, but they belong not so much to the
dreamtime as to dream work. The nomads enter the dreamtime not by setting off on
some extraordinary, dangerous voyage, but through their everyday, ambulatory
movement.
    To symbolize the point, the Australian Aborigines have a “sacred post”
(a rough translation, of course, because it’s not sacred in the western sense),
which they carry with them and drive into the ground when they camp each night,
at a slight angle, like the tower of Pisa, to indicate the direction they will
take the next day. This post is decorated with carvings, which allude to the
mythic itinerary, and in this way it combines the two contrasting motifs of the
halt (signaled by the place where the post has been driven into the ground) and
the itinerary (doubly represented by its inclination and the carvings, since the
itinerary has two aspects, relating to food-gathering and to myth,
while the point is single in its nature—it is always a point