Emily Nguyen, Week #9: Blink

A burglar once broke and entered into my home. He wore a fedora-like hat and a dark coat; he was a shadowed figure overall. Coming down the stairs, woken by the ruckus, I had seen him lurking around the corners of my house, harboring an aura of ill-intent. I was completely shaken up. For Pete’s sake—a whole stranger was in my house!! 

And then I woke up, seeing both that man and mirages behind my eyelids. I had this exact nightmare when I was a kid—and it was all because of one sign.



This is a totally harmless sign. In fact, it is a noble reminder for the community to stay vigilant and to keep the neighborhood safe. The only problem: that eye. 


Eyes are so freaky. Well, the organ itself is pretty interesting. But that idea that something is watching is a bit chilling. Like, what if you were conducting a non-academic activity during academic work time, and a teacher’s gaze hovered right over your screen? Or you woke up in the middle of the night and an eye was there, in the darkness to your left, peering at you? The eye on that sign freaked me out, and honestly, it still does. It feels so cryptic, even as the flat image it is. To think that the simple imagery spooked me to the extent of having a vivid nightmare about it is funny—but also reveals the power within the simple depiction of an eye. 


Possessed people, crazy people, they’ve all got some kind of look in their eyes. Eyes have the power to haunt you, make you tremble in your knees, pressure you, but they also have the ability to enamor you. Eyes are beautiful too. 


Depending on the context, eyes can be holy and lovely. Like the eyes of a lover, they might entrance you. The look of someone pleading with you, or somebody captured by your presence; they all sway your heart. There’s this cliche saying that eyes are the window to the soul after all…


In another sense, people also possess the capability to close their eyes, and stay ignorant to the sights of the world. In my case, I blinked to open my eyes from that frightful dream.  

Comments

  1. Romir SJanuary 17, 2026 at 9:12 PM

    Emily! I want to start by saying that I'm glad we got placed into the same cohort again, as I loved reading you blogs last semester, and I'm looking forward to reading them this semester. I will say that the first reaction I had while reading was that I felt incredibly scared by the fact you remembered such vivid details of a (and I quote) STRANGER in your house. This would leave me absolutely petrified (imagine Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets).

    Reading the "and then I woke up" brought both peace (as I was extremely on edge) and nostalgia to me, because I vividly remember how often I used to end essays with this legendary (HIMYM reference) line.

    I think it's interesting that a single sign caused so much trauma to you because at least for me, I've never had such an impactful connection with a road sign. It really testifies how much value objects hold, and how our perceptions of them are not only unique/distinct, but SUPER consequential.

    On a quick tangent, this whole blog reminded me of the "Now You See Me" movies—which are so amazing—as you presented the topic of an eye so powerfully, which is what they do in the movie.

    Before this blog, I hadn't given much thought to the power the eye holds. Like yes, I know that eye contact matters, and you need them to see, but I didn't really analyze beyond that.

    And finally, I loved the ending of your blog. It's almost paradoxical how you not only close your eyes as an escape mechanism, but also open them for a parallel purpose.

    Overall, I loved reading this blog, and it gave me new insight on the concept/topic of eyes!

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  2. Lara Reyes-TerryJanuary 20, 2026 at 9:06 PM

    First off, looking out of the window in my room, I can see this exact sign staring me down across the driveway and it sort of jolted me awake. I’m not completely used to having landmarks and stuff I know/see personally be acknowledged so readily (even if this is literally just a sign that exists in many places). Your introduction was so captivating, I literally gasped as I read that first line (thankfully that did not turn out to be a serious threat). There was a period last year where I also experienced similar nightmares/hallucinations although that was prompted by my easel looming over my bed. I completely agree with your assessment about eyes, I think most people I’ve known have had some sort of fascination with them (windows to the soul after all), and I’m sure a lot of people in general can relate to the constant doodling of them on random homework assignments. The way you write about eyes reminds me of the eyes of T.J Eckleburg, the “kerosene blue” eyes from Ocean Vuong’s poem “The Bull,” the watchful gaze of Big Brother, the eye imagery surrounding A Clockwork Orange (which I am currently trying to read at the moment). Eyes watch, they learn and study, and they are inseparable from the sockets in which they reside. Which begs the question, whose eyes are they and whose hands will act on the observations? Overall, super interesting blog post, so happy to see you in my cohort again!

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  3. ShriramJanuary 21, 2026 at 7:49 PM

    Hi Emily, your blog was thoroughly engaging; I love talking about eyes! So much so that I also did so in one of my previous blogs, and will probably do so again. I focused on eyes being a window to the soul, as you mentioned, but I didn’t consider the less flattering side of the image. Your blog doesn’t romanticize them as I did, and brings up some interesting symbols. One thing I am particularly fascinated with is the idea that eyes represent someone unknown watching, even surveillance. Similar to the eyes of Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, any looming pair of eyes serves to create constant pressure to act as if someone were watching, or to essentially submit oneself to perpetual judgement.

    I also enjoyed how you started out your blog, it was certainly effective in drawing me into the rest of your text—even after you revealed that the threat wasn’t real.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alex FrancavillaJanuary 21, 2026 at 9:41 PM

    The more I think about it, the sense of sight is so interesting. Biologically, seeing is just feeling light, which sounds quite poetic but is more or less true. The optical nerves in eyes that sense different light wavelengths aren’t too dissimilar to the nerves in your skin that detect when your skin touches something. It’s probably why you can literally “feel your way around” somewhere you can’t see because the signals that get sent to your brain are instead the physical properties of objects instead of the way they reflect light.

    And because the human body is complicated beyond comprehension, our eyes can very easily fail us. Illusions, mirages, and magic tricks all work against our sense of vision to make us think either we are crazy or the laws of physics have been broken. They aren’t safe from medical conditions either. I remember once when I was around 10 years old, down with a flu, lying limp in my bed unable to sleep, like a sickly Victorian child. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why all the tiny little colorful dots on my ceiling were suddenly so much more vivid and didn’t go away when my eyes closed. “Maybe that’s just what the color black looks like. Hmm.” Spoiler alert: look up “visual snow syndrome” on Google.

    That Neighborhood Crime Watch is everywhere (which I am further realizing after reading some of the comments under this blog post). Interestingly, the pupil isn’t even directed straight forward, yet we perceive it as watching over us. It’s similar to the eyes of Mona Lisa which seem to follow the viewer despite being directed off to the right side. Scary stuff.

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