The Pseudo-Chronicles of Mark Huntley

Turning a Cornea - 9/14/04

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

Today, before my eye doctor appointment, I started having problems with the other eye. My left one. Same cloudiness that had been bothering my right, which seemed a little better. Now you can imagine my concern at this point.

I reported the difficulties with both my eyes to Dr. Leonsis. He examined them... and told me that there was nothing wrong with either one. My glasses still had the right prescription. In fact, he told me in a very irritated tone that I worry about my eyes too much.

Imagine, hearing that from an optometrist!

I mean, it's true that I might have obsessed over my vision in the past. And maybe paid a couple too many visits to Dr. Leonsis within the space of a few months earlier this year. It was a bad spring. Well, leading into a bad early summer. I swore that I could track some kind of deterioration in my sight day by day. Then it got better.

And- well- I guess I've gone through periods like that before. Before this year. I just get concerned, sometimes. You only come into this world with two eyes. If you fuck them up, that's it. You don't get a second pair. I can't imagine living in absolute darkness every day for the rest of my potentially overlong life.

Doesn't the thought of that terrify anyone else? It can't just be me. I don't know how the blind cope.

But anyway. This isn't like those other times. I know that something is wrong, really wrong this time, and you'll see why below. Maybe I should find another eye doctor. I might have cried wolf too often to Dr. Leonsis. Still, you'd think the man would be able to recognize a disorder right off, if there was one.

I left his office in a bit of a huff and went back to my apartment. This was around three. I took a nap and woke up feeling refreshed- my eyes seemed better, too. I started thinking, had I just been overworking my eyes? Could be I needed to rest them more often. Was Leonsis right, that there really wasn't anything the matter?

Since I'd taken the afternoon off from work and it was pretty decent out, not too hot, I decided to take a walk around the streets for a while. Soon enough, I found myself wandering up in the direction of Adams Morgan ("hip" area north of Dupont, if you are unfamiliar with D.C., Reader). They're laidback there, kind of artsy, and usually it puts me in a good mood. But the neighborhood just seemed unwelcome today, on a grey day. I wandered on across the Duke Ellington bridge and had a snack at the Chipotle on Connecticut (you know, the one near the Woodley Park-Zoo metro stop). Then I figured I would head back the way I came.

I walked along Calvert St., and a little before I reached the bridge, my vision got blurry, then blurrier, then just completely scrambled. I couldn't tell whether I was looking at lightposts or human beings. I blundered around in a panic for a few seconds... then I rooted myself to where I was, forcing my brain to take stock of the situation. Wouldn't help to stumble into the street and get mowed down by a Pontiac, would it? Would not help at all.

So. I was standing on the sidewalk, still, I thought, facing in the general direction of the bridge. I knew about a drugstore only a few dozen yards away from the other side. I thought maybe if I could get there, someone could help me get some eyedrops to see if those would help. I wouldn't face any danger crossing the bridge, if I kept out of the road. The "suicide prevention bars" (ending the Duke's long, proud tradition of jumpers) would keep me from falling into the river below.

I took a few steps forward. Still on solid ground. Good. I tapped around with my right foot until I located the curb. I'd just keep that on my right, and I'd be all set. I continued like this, baby-steppin', until something stopped me dead right before the bridge. Though everything else was blurry, one word stood out to me in the air. Crisp as an autumn day.

FADE *

How could that be? How could I not see anything else clearly except for this word? Where had it come from?

I walked right past it, my legs shaking as I slipped back into panic. Suddenly I couldn't find the curb anymore. I lunged forward, took a few steps, took a few more, heard a car honking nearby but was it because of me?

I was approaching another word. This one was lower than the first, but still floating in a sea of no focus:

INER

"Iner"? What did that even mean? I approached the word, not even sure at this point whether I was still in the world I thought I knew. Maybe I'd fallen into a-a waking dream, I guess? Sleepwalking? No, walking in a world created within my sleep? I didn't know how to draw that line.

I crashed into something hard as I walked to the "Iner." I yowled as pain shot through me, at a crunch to the face. Thank you for your service, suicide prevention bars, I thought. You've just broken my nose.

The pain seemed to bring heightened clarity to every part of me, though. My eyes slowly brought my surroundings back into focus. I was standing partway across the Duke. "Iner" was a piece of graffiti (singular: a graffito! So lonely on its owney) sprayed on the part of the wall that curved out into a... curved part (Sorry, I don't feel like looking up the right term. Isn't "graffito" enough for you?). I put my hand to my face and it came away wet. My nose was bleeding. Fortunately, it didn't seem to be broken. I hadn't cracked my glasses, either. This was Mark Huntley's lucky day.

I stopped up the bleeding with my handkerchief and retraced my steps to the Woodley Park side of the bridge, where I'd just come from. "Fade" was another graffito, this one on the back of a sign. I shook my head, confused, and headed back across the bridge; I wanted to get home as soon as I could. It made no sense that I'd been able to see random graffiti when all else was blurred out.

Just when I thought I'd made it home, escaping the bounds of a Zone of Weird Crap, I crossed the path of a girl in a tank and shorts, power-walking, with a pair of headphones clamped over her braided head.

Guess what song she was humming to herself, clever Reader?

That's right. The Police seem to be making a comeback in a big way. Even if it's only via one particular song from 1980. And this time just down the street from my apartment building.

I don't know what the hell's going on. You might say it's a whole lot of nothing. But from my point of view, a lot of strange things are happening around here, all of which having popped up in the last couple of weeks.

My eyes. Gwen and her secrets. My dreams and my "bad feelings." "Fade." "Iner." Hell, let's even throw Mr. Pool Party in there, literally knocking me onto my ass.

Did breaking up with Lucy trigger all of this? I have a theory now that the Zone of Weird Crap is actually the Zone of Bad Karma. Into which insensitive young men are flung for their sins. If I call her, will this all stop?

posted by Mark Huntley @ 11:47 PM

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