(translation: Sergio de Régules)

The Chelyabinsk Meteor

A floodgate opens and a suddenly visible brightness pours into Revolution Square, pushing the dull grey of the morning into a screaming crescendo. Untimely shadows appear on the pavement and the heavy buildings of the Soviet era and the pines in the park are suddenly afloat on moving pools of ink. As if the sun were rushing to get the business of illuminating the world out of the way, the shadows sweep through their daily course in a few terrifying seconds. It is the terror of portents, of the order of nature disrupted, of earthquakes and the fall of Twin Towers –the horrific motion of that which ought not to move.

The light rises to a high brilliance not even the midday sun could match. The webcam struggles to adjust to this sudden change of brightness and color which starts with a yellowish glow and peaks with the blinding white of a nuclear explosion. The image falters, becomes black, and is finally stable again as the flood of brightness ebbs, having for five seconds turned the Revolution Square in Chelyabinsk into a painting by Giorgio de Chirico. A cloud of pigeons takes to the sky in fright.