Where do we locate what is not physically present? Where are we when we speak into a telephone? Where we are when we are inside of the border and cannot get out? That is to say, where is that which is not physically here due to circumstance rather than conviction. The question, philosophically, is perceptual. A is (physically) here and therefore not (physically) there. B is (physically) there and therefore not (physically) here. This perception stirs up the disjunctive between the Shakespearean to be or not to be and the there of a dinosaur that alienates us through fear because it is always there and never here (although it always is) in Augusto Monterroso’s story.[1] The answer is a minifiction, a phrase whose past and future are uncertain within the constant present of a line, a marrow whose subjective skeleton is yet to be discovered: a virtual realm.
[1] Cuando despertó el dinosaurio todavía estaba allí. (When he awoke the dinosaur was still there).
Augusto Monterroso’s story is the second shortest in the history of literature written in Spanish.