Left Right Above Below

by Djurdja Otzan

Voice I: You stand on Earth and look at the sky. It is day, let's say noon. The light that allows you to look at the matter of the cosmos is exactly strong enough to lighten it from black to blue. The blue starts somewhere, perhaps a meter from you, you can't tell, but it gets denser; it is pale, diffuse. You can caress it with your gaze, it doesn't hurt, it spares you. It moves from you. Somewhere in the depth of the universe it gathers, and from there it hurtles to you and Earth, hurtles, I say, just like a mast or a meteor, a pure, innocent flag. Along its own trajectory, not of this world. It goes from right to left, to the lower corner like the point of an invisible star. Something earthly draws it, you think, and at that moment you register its position. The first half has gone off deeply into the light of day from which you watch it, while the other half is still there, in the fifth dimension of depth, if such a dimension exists. Why is it that you think the first half has remained there, in depth, when it would be logical that the first half is closer to you? Because you think of it as coming from there, though it seems to you that it is moving eternally from that first covert. What summoned it, what draws it? At the moment when you notice that its median is breaking diagonally through the fibers in the layers of blue, and with them making an intersection of the vertical and the horizontal, you understand that it is creating a sense of space between itself and your world, but then, only then can you see that your world is clearly bounded by the intersecting of the horizontal and vertical at its other end that is pulling the flag, giving it direction, downward, onward, bypassing you, constantly reviving the its virginal whiteness with black. It has taken the temptations of your world further, a dead crossing, dense to be brought to life, and not, like the blue, dense to conceal and motivate. You see the cross that brought its whiteness to the surface, and you can hardly wait for it to stream by you and take itself further, to others. You move, lightened, toward its source, and transformed, you follow it, understanding that now you are going to the right, out and forward. When were you freer, before or now? The flag hurtles alone, and you feel mercy that you noticed this, no matter where. No, there is no wind, the flag is completely straight, like pride, like an upright, pure sheet of paper, no one is fighting in its name, to sully it more than it allows. It bears your black cross, broad, fat, greasy, and it fights in your stead, it fights, indeed, so that no one will pull it to one side, and that is what fills you with happiness. It has come from the future to offer itself to you. A lasting encounter.

Why am I speaking to you? Lift your arms shoulder high and when you feel that each of your arms somewhere far on the horizon is slicing space in half, where will you head?
(five second pause)

Voice II: Again:
(the story repeats)

If it runs three times, there should be three voices (a woman's a man's, a second woman's), if it runs four times, then four (W1, M1, W2, M2, etc.). Each time a new speaker. The image appears with the new, different voice each subsequent time and is heard and understood differently.
The story lasts about 2.5 minutes. When repeated once it will take 5 minutes.