Goth Jogging

or

I Run With the Night

There's a wealth of literature these days devoted to the everyday struggles of the neuroatypical individual. That's good though, because it educates the public and gives us a forum in which to compare notes and offer each other advice and support. But in this blog entry, I'd like to take a little time to explore one of the the pleasures I derive from my autism. That's right. Pleasures. Because the pleasures I get from my neurological differences are very real, just as real as the hassles. So I want to take you down a different path tonight. I think you'll like it. I know the path is full of shadows and we can barely see where we're going, but what if I told you I had other senses to guide us? Do you trust me? You should. I know the night like the back of my hand. If you don't mind the dark, keep reading and stick close to me.

I've always loved the night time. You see, I'm a different person at night. The sensory issues that often hold me hostage to alternating currents of overload and numbness during the day transform as the sun sets. I can only describe it as the sensation of my brain cooling down like a radiator in a parked car after a hot day on the road. To lots of people, the dark is something to be feared. To me, it's part church, part laboratory, part playground. Even as a child as young as four, I played outside at night. Roaming the streets and alleys like a little white haunt, fleet of foot and swift of shadow. I loved everything about it. Velveteen light from passing windows. Delicious cooking smells and fabric softener. Bare feet on cool, smooth grass, on razor gravel, on tarmac warm as freshly baked bread. Perfume and gasoline. Hide and go seek until you're found and kissed too quickly to protest. Freshly cut grass and cigarettes. Older men in their garages, wearing fluorescent halos as they pray over car engines. Clink and rattle of doors opening and closing, people coming and going like actors on a stage. A wonderful world of bruised skies wrapped in purple spiderweb clouds where baby spider stars sparkle like tiny gemstones. Kissing cool breezes or moist, sticky air licking my skin. Mosquitoes swimming in my smoky breath. Dappling, dancing leaves and barking dogs. No past. No future. Only right now, captured and immaculate in a veil of blue shadows. A slice of a parallel dimension bleeding through and visible to those who would look.

I looked. I saw. I still see it. When I run at night, I travel back to this time, to endless summers of gorgeous immortality and ignorance. When I run at night, I realize I never really left.