phantom race

themes of invisible duel tiny crowns clink against the porcelain sink. in my dream, teeth fall like winter rain, each loss reverberates in the cavern of my mouth. voids-within-a-void. i jolt wake up at 2 am, tracing a phantom absence with my tongue. tomorrow’s my first 10k of the year, but it’s not pre-race anxiety that keeps me awake - it was the fear of sleeplessness itself. i have recurring dreams of losing teeth, and each time i’m reminded of the quote by black-toothed sartre, who speaks of the life of a man without teeth, who’s never been bitten, waiting - and then ascertain that they don’t have teeth anymore.

come 7am, anticipation condenses into visible puffs of breath in central park. new york february stings and claws at you like a phantom dream. a thousand strangers huddle at the starting line, all buying into the same absurd ritual: $50 to run loops around a park at dawn. frostbite clamp my fingertips, but six miles ahead, there’s something i still want to hold. something i want to become - or perhaps outrun.

races aren’t competitions. despite their name, you don’t run against others: it’s just you versus the clock. but the crowd matters. J and M flank me in the beginning, and their rapid strides motivate me to push myself. familiar strangers blur in my periphery, the rhythm of their footstrike tugging me forward.

this is the magic of shared air: a cultish camaraderie forged by pounding hearts and aching feet. in step with you, it all boils down to you and the clock.

the first three miles are negotiation: breath vs cold, ambition vs steadiness. by mile four my body melts into motion. muscles loosen, thoughts dissipate, pace stabilizes. then she appears - another runner, similar stature to mine, blitzing past me from behind. a blip of jealousy seizes me, acidic and absurd. i don’t know who this is - she is but a stranger.

atluru calls these ‘invisible duels’ - unspoken competitions that emerge with strangers, whose achievements serving as distorted mirrors of our own progress. the blur of this phantom’s neon shoes taunt me, a funhouse reflection of my own complacency. i push harder, choking on her dust, until the void between us is impenetrable.

what is this void? the french say l’appel du vide - standing at the edge of the cliff, staring into the abyss. is it something to run away from or run towards? is it a space of your deepest fears about fulfilling your own potential, or where striving ceases?

by mile 5, the chase unravels and the mirage evaporates. she is not my rival. it’s just me, and teeth in perpetual instability, the alarm ringing in my ears announcing my time is up.

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even alone, these phantoms haunt me. on the treadmill, in this dinky $10/month planet fitness alternate universe, i imagine the shadow-monsters from temple run nipping at my heels. what if they ran beside me? what if the gap between us widened, teeth gnashing at empty air? This is the trap: mistaking projections for benchmarks, letting phantoms diagnose the voids they cannot fill.

yet they are not all distractions; peripheral pace-setting is effective motivation. mentors ahead shift the frontier of possibility. while these silent competitions can pull us away from authentic self-determination, they also serve as waypoints in our journey. in a river, there are no lanes; currents carry all who dare swim. you just have to dare to weave through the crowd and chart your own wayward path. a friend asks me what word i’d choose to describe 2025, and i answer without hesitation: forward.

murakami famously speaks of the twinship between running and writing. with a daily dose of 10 kilometers and 10 pages of manuscript, he strikes a covenant with motion. For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die. he runs to enter the realm of the metaphysical, where he his inner voice echoes loudest and he accesses his own notion of a void. “i run in void. or maybe I should put it the other way: i run in order to acquire a void.”

humans are viscerally uncomfortable with emptiness. we itch to fill up space in conversation & in places. we yearn to assert our presence -to confront this void means to accept the inevitability of nothingness. yet to invoke zen buddhism, the void can also be a peaceful emptiness you carry within. 無心—“no mind”— a peaceful state of consciousness you carry within you. it refers to a state of mental emptiness and total presence, ingredients that facilitate the natural emergence of new ideas. within this zone, your mind can wander and thoughts unfold into their natural trajectories. it’s no wonder my clearest writing ideas come from morning runs & why running feels like an existential exercise in meditation.

we carry voids within us. the spaces between breaths. the gaps in our teeth. we can fill cavities with overthinking, escape mechanisms, falsified competitions with others - but it’s something to embrace rather than escape. perhaps this is how we learn to run alongside our ghosts, letting their footfalls mix with our own in the morning air.

peripheral pace-setting is effective motivation, but at the end of a day it’s a battle of the self. you are not running against others, you are running against a shadow of your self that is somehow one step ahead of you at every turn. I run; therefore I am.

has this notion of a void, of straining your ears to hear an inner voice that grows louder as you move. the inner voice asking me why i write like you’re running out of time on long runs. and questions what is it exactly im running from. there’s an eternal identity conflict, as i grapple with the distance between who i am today and who i want to be tomorrow.

unlike a swimming pool there’s no clear demarcation of lanes. there is no zero-sum game - there is enough room in the river at every level for everyone who strives. you just have to dare to weave between the others, dare to pass your perceived limits. i don’t necessarily fear being slower comparison to others as much as fear losing momentum myself. a friend asks what word i’d use to describe 2025, and in my honesty i say motion. For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die.

there is this invisible timer within.

peripheral pace-setting is effective motivation, but at the end of a day it’s a battle of the self. you are not running against others, you are running against a shadow of your self that is somehow one step ahead of you at every turn. I run; therefore I am.

‘funhouse mirror warping your self-image.’

i don’t necessarily fear being slower comparison to others as much as fear losing momentum myself. a friend asks what word i’d use to describe 2025, and in my honesty i say motion. For novelists are like certain types of fish. If they don’t keep swimming forward, they die.

i write to run and i run to write. murakami famously introspects on these twin interests, a daily habit of 4 miles and 400 words that’s fueled his literary career. he speaks of the notion of a void, of straining your ears to hear an inner voice that grows louder as you move. the inner voice asking me why i write like you’re running out of time on long runs. and questions what is it exactly im running from. therein an identity conflict, as i constantly struggle with the distance my current state and who i want to be.

there’s this void murakami speaks to in notes on a runner

“By then running had entered the realm of the metaphysical. First there came the action of running, and accompanying it there was this entity known as me. I run; therefore I am.” “Being active every day makes it easier to hear that inner voice.” “I just run. I run in void. Or maybe I should put it the other way: I run in order to acquire a void.”