*Blink (n.) - a stronger form of déjà vu, the physical reliving of memory.

Crossing the Key Bridge in the Light

Sunset. The sum of my existence is everything I can see. An inscrutable gradient orange-to-pink holds my attention as I jog across the Key Bridge, head turned as I run. I’m just starting out, tendons tight from a day spent sitting.

Dusk brings me closer to a vague understanding of time I neither ask for nor desire. Something about cycles, getting older. I resist the thought. I want to be lost in the buffeting of the wind.

I reach the end of the bridge, drop down into the brick alleyways of Georgetown. The sun is setting. I resist the urge to speed up. I cannot beat the night. Relax. Over the next twenty minutes, the last of the light scatters itself into oblivion.

Now it is properly dark.

Rock Creek Parkway and Being Seen

My world is a tunnel of black. There is nothing in front of me to see and the only thing that matters is where I put my feet. I feel like some primordial creature trying to sort itself out in the darkness. I feel close to the center of myself. The rise and fall of the ground, the change from concrete to asphalt: I feel it. The air is hot and heavy. It is supposed to storm tonight. The wind kicks up intermittently from changing sides. I smell wet leaves.

It’s been shown that the lack of sensory stimulation can lead to hallucinations. This isn’t quite that. I can still feel plenty. I just can’t see.

I have an altered perception of the world because I have lost a sense. Everything else is heightened, automatic. I trust my feet. I retreat into myself. In my head, I begin to write:

Thoughts on Running in the Dark. I’ve been running in the dark a lot lately. Every day after work. It sounds like a bad thing, but I like it. I like returning to a familiar place. Except it’s not a place, really. The darkness is the familiar thing and it’s the covering-up of any place. I feel familiar to myself. I don’t have anything to look at so I think more clearly. And that thinking-clearly-place is what I like and what I enjoy returning to. It’s like—

A runner passes me going the opposite direction. He raises a hand in greeting. Reflexively, I raise my hand to acknowledge him.

Like being jolted out of bed just before falling asleep, it takes me a few minutes to return to the muted existence of my thoughts:

There’s a community in the dark. Other runners you don’t see until they are five feet from you.

We are polite. We greet each other without speaking. For that fleeting moment of passing, we are Seen.

I don’t think people are Seen enough.*

It’s worth noting: Being Seen isn’t about literally being seen. I barely saw that person. Being Seen is about being understood.

Being Seen is not about being deciphered. I can work to understand somebody but that isn’t the same thing. To be Seen is to be understood effortlessly without asking for it. To be Seen is to be understood because of the intermingling of shared experience.

I felt Seen by that person because he didn’t speak to me. Instead, he raised a hand. I felt Seen by that gesture because it recognized I would not want to speak; I had settled into my own thoughts and the silence of the run and so had he. We shared a mutual respect for each other’s experience and knew what it was like to feel miles in our bones.

Disassociative Scale: American Monuments Edition™**

I run back under the bridge. Along the Georgetown waterfront, infrequent streetlights provide some guidance. To my right, the Potomac is choppy and grey. I loop around the Lincoln Memorial, run alongside the reflecting pool. I stride past the Washington Monument, too close to grasp its scale. I cross the street to the National Mall and trace my way to the first lawn. Jogging over the thick bluegrass, I recall something Fitzgerald once wrote: “where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.”***

I run the mile along the Mall. At the far end, the Capitol building spills wet light onto the whitened grass. I round the turn on the last lawn and begin the mile back. Far off, the Washington Monument is an impressive flagpole marking West.

To these great stone structures, I’m a furtive ghost. I consider my scale momentarily and then I have the Blink. Night last March. I’m running in Rome. There’s the Forum, all marbled out in the cut-up earth. I slip along the old stone banks of the dark green Tiber. How many people stood here? Picnic-ed here? Died here? Two-thousand years is a long time. America’s monuments might as well be props on a movie set. The Blink is over.

I still have a vague sense of history which helps to pass the time. I wonder whether one day, the National Mall will be a dug-up stretch of dirt like the gladiator track in Rome****, and whether or not citizens of a new nation will come to view the old Capitol. It’s a thought indicative of the dark, where big ideas come and go.

Stronger than Déjà vu*****
I run over the Arlington Memorial Bridge in a blustery crosswind. Passing the shadowy gates of the Cemetary, I drop down onto the Mount Vernon Trail. There are no streetlights here. The silvery Potomac is my only guide. I begin writing in my head:

I want to write about the Blink.******

It happens when I run. But it isn’t the same thing as getting lost in thought. And it isn’t déjà vu. It’s greater than that. More intense.

The Blink is when I run into memories. I’m not remembering them. I’m in them. War reenactors describe the Blink. Sometimes, when they put on the outfits and conduct the battle, they aren’t simply acting they are actually reenacting in the truest sense of the word. They are in contact with the past. They can feel the past coming through to the present through their actions.

Déjà vu is an effect of familiarity. It’s the mixing-up of memory. A recall error. The Blink is déjà vu amplified by bodily experience. It’s the result of sweating-breathing-pulsing in the same way as before in a place similar to before.

I had a particularly intense Blink a few weeks ago. I was running in Pine Park in New Hampshire in the dark. I could barely see. My body was reading the serpentines of the path I had run hundreds of times before. There was the same cut-wood smell. The same sound of crunching leaves and rhythmic steady breaths. In the dark, I made the turn instinctually. I felt my body falling-through-space adjusting-course-automatically to keep me from plummeting into the adjacent creek, and just as I felt that contained feeling of falling, I had the Blink.

I was running here after graduation; after a visit to Dartmouth-Hitchcock; after final exams Junior spring; after a breakup; after a divorce; after First-Year Trips.

I was running here wistful, stressed, satisfied, confused, devastated, and unbelievably eager. I was the sum total of all I was then.

Chills crept over me. I cried a little as I ran.

Epilogue: In the Light

I’m back in the locker room. The small underground storage area is near my work. I’m the only one here. I’m stretching under the fluorescent lights. The ground is hard and tiled. Occasionally, I’ll chat with the cleaning lady who is my age when she comes by to mop. Otherwise, I am alone.

I undress, step into the hot shower, and think about the landscape. I have always felt close to the places I inhabit. I think running is a big part of that. If the Blink is a heightened form of déjà vu, then running is a form of reading; my feet are my eyes; the earth is the book; each place is a page.

I focus my attention on the warm water. It feels good on my stiff neck. I dig two fingers into the tight flesh behind my collarbone. It occurs to me that one day I will be older. My tendons will be shot. My zip will be gone.

I close my eyes and think of the day I give somebody a kiss and set out for a slow run in the dark only to find that despite all that has changed between now and then the Blink is forever.

Footnotes:

*I had help reaching this conclusion. Thank You

**I have written about disassociative scale before (some call it “the Sublime”)

***This line is from the last page of Gatsby (a page which has been chopped up, excerpted, and quoted ad nauseam). Although I don’t believe I’ve ever encountered this quote outside of the book, I think it’s a strong candidate for Exceptional Writing, in part because of its simplicity. I’m also 99% sure it isn’t about the lawns of the National Mall, but I like it anyway.

****What? He said “Rome” again? Yeah: Rome Rome Rome. ~Europe changed me~

*****Déjà vu is a fascinating concept in its own right (and something I intend to write about in the future). For the time being, you can amuse yourself with this wiki. I’d suggest the section on related phenomenon to déjà vu including presque vu (feeling like you are on the verge of an epiphany such as when you struggle to recall the name of ‘that actor’) déjà rêvé (“already dreamed”: the feeling you are living through something you previously dreamt) and déjà vécu (pathological déjà vu; patients with this disorder withdraw from people and events under the delusion they have already participated in what will happen).

******And I want to know more about it, too. So far, one person I’ve talked to has confirmed the Blink happens to him from time to time. Has it ever happened to you? If so, please leave a comment, or email me: benszuhaj@gmail.com. I’d like to learn more about this :)