The role of the dark in motion pictures Recall the ratchet and flutter of gradeschool projectors. Sprocket teeth sank into slots in the film feeding into a loop slack enough not to tear as each frame jerked down and stopped behind the shutter. Each second, twenty-four frames flashed thrice on screen. Between, in seventy-one lulls, light storms just gathered in the fourth-grade eye subsided while edges snagged from each flurry differed, or didn't, from previous edges. In the dark the net wove stills into quick tapestry, smooth motion arising like heat from the image mulch. Last century, animations glimpsed though slits in a spinning drum used the drum's opacity, not darkness, for the lull. Back in the cave firelight flickers, shadows leap on the walls. Painted bison seem suddenly to lope, all four feet aloft. The huddled children blink The signature of time ablaze in the tissues Selvage Solving systems of simultaneous constraints
