ABSTRACT
This chapter explains that traces are formed on surfaces, threads are strung through the air. It argues that these two manifestations of line are readily inter-convertible. Among the Aboriginal people of Yarralin, in the Australian Northern Territory, the converse transformation occurs, from trace to thread. The chapter descirbes the wind-walker's every inhalation forms a vortex in the wind's passage as it sweeps past, and every exhalation is like an invisible stick which thrusts through the opening created thereby. Exhalation follows inhalation as step follows step in a closely coupled, rhythmic alternation. The philosopher Gaston Bachelard gets to the heart of the matter by comparing the walker to a reed. In a world without objects, the breath is a kind of aerial knot, tied by the organism in the turbulent wind, binding it to others in precisely the kind of intimacy that is denied by an object-oriented ontology.
