1.
In the end we saw only one deer. There they were, our boys, Old Teddy R. included, crammed into the quartet as a producer's credit. Midnight passed cool over undressed arms. The parking lot imposed a band of illuminated concrete against the impression of tall pines. Set off from a row of flags, the thing itself looked like nothing else than its own postcard. One stared, turned, and redoubled, trying to make out the texture of the rock. It was late and nothing had been arranged.
The surrounding towns were named for western pictures. One pizza stand kept itself open for our sake. I purchased a Pepsi from a mini-fridge beneath the counter. The proprietress offered a word about deer, their density, the damage their bodies might permit a vehicle at speed. Blue varnish wore itself into the shape of a mountain. My carmate thanked her; his body acted as a regulator, the accelerator eased until it released its tension. It was still so far to Seattle. Graciously, now, an artificial lake vouchsafed the western front, but the pines still crowding the road's edge. The map offered no closer stopping places. At such times one is at the mercy of trivial facts of geometry: a complex, three-dimensional object, generates an infinity of silhouettes.
In the darkness, half into sleep, one accepts any smear frame. A post box before a hedgerow? Check. A houselight breaching a conifer's stray branch? Nothing more like antlers in full array. Bends further in the row, snatches of unillumination, offered themselves precisely as a fawn's haunches. A deer's eyes go wide and bright before a car's headlights, but so do many other things. Nothing was said. Music had been left with the presidents. After so much antechamber, hell might be a small and kindly place.
2.
Light drifts apart from bodies. In Simon Liu's Signal 8. Odd squares of sunlight laze against the reflection of an unpersoned escalator. Bubbles catch and reflect light. From the edge of space, at night, a map emerges. For each pixel, a certain quantity of persons in motions. Dim roads like ley lines connect the brilliant city. In the thick of it, the relation is troubled. Lights are left on. In the basement of a construction sight, blue fluorescents keep burning their wattage. A bank of monitors misfires, substituting their portion of an advertisement for static. The camera itself warps and flares, caught on neon and spotlight. A welder's torch lets forth an arc of waste light. Confronted with crowd, with motion, the film strobes and stutters.
The history of the economy is the fall in the price of light. Two candles might illuminate a room to five percent the brightness of a filament bulb at far greater expense (cf. Nordhaus). On my desk, a product branding itself as HappyLight offers a surface illuminated to ten thousand lux, the same brightness as a cloudless day. A bottle of vitamin D pills, advertised with a smiling sun, insinuate the phrase seasonal depression. Otherwise we talk of nothing and Simon Liu’s film climaxes but does not end with fireworks. New years day and on a message board a man shares a shot of the Space Needle. I thank him. I had missed it. I had a sleep mask pulled over my eyes.
In its final shots, Signal 8 escapes the city, Hong Kong. In even, clouded light, a bison turns, hosting a white bird. On our way out of Chicago, he points out that the street numbers keep incrementing. Here, they reach two hundred and define an acre of corn. The shot follows the bison for a moment and lets it leave the frame, refocusing on a scarecrow. CDs dangle from its sleeves and in the moment before the credits we imagine but do not see them glitter. That summer, the streets fill with smoke. They have begun to burn the shadows from the forest. The ones that look like deer.