According to Aboriginal theory, the ancestor first called
out his own name and this gave rise to the most sacred and secret
couplet or couplets of his song. Then he named the place where
he had originated, the trees or rocks growing near his home, the
animals sporting about nearby, (
)
Theodor Strehlow, Songs of Central Australia
A sense of DÉJA VU is doubled
for the adoptee who is always on the lookout for markers, signs,
or clues to a parallel life.
Is this place familiar because I have been here before
as a child? Would this tree, this field, this lake, (...) have meaning
for me in an alternate reality?
Can the earth speak of family? Can landscape or a sense of place,
run in the blood through generations? Am I romanticizing lineage;
idealizing the passing down of memories through veins; blood-passages
like road maps and hidden itineraries?
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