Negating the negatives

On the dusk of his 45th birthday, in the feathered edges of the sun's copper rays, leaning into the rhythm he picked up on the run, something new was born.

It wasn't habit to spend too much time in the post-run coolldown, but lids half closed, reviewing what had unfolded, he knew today would be different.

He'd culled all of the classic running metrics into a handful of trusted's over the years- negative-splits, time per km, and heartrate. Today, working in concert, they sired something new.

It sprouted as most discoverds did after 40 minutes of running. At 5 minutes, the back ached and the mind raced; at 12 the breathing and blood sugar settled, at 30 commitment to the run took place, and at 40 minutes, the physical, mental and spiritual unfolded into the grand cartography that he adored exploring:

to the left, water and trees; to the right, trees and earth, straight ahead and behind the gravelled dirt path; and together - a moving cross with him ever at its center, ever forward, ever forward

and here,

here is where it unfolded:

The whoosh whoosh whoosh of his heart overlaid on the thump thump of his footfall - a triplet over a duplet; tension pulling and releasing in a physical dialectic - spawning tiny electric shivers at the base of the skull that bloomed full as untethered images that coalesced into negative-negatives: words which seemed to swallow themselves:

never-not being
surrendering surrender
voiding the void

There was *just* enough glucose coursing through the system to wave the negative-negatives like prayer flags for the duration of the run without total engagement; but when things settled in the cooldown, they lit up the interior and danced for attention:

never not-being: 'being' dropped like a rock in a pond, sending ripples out; 'not-being' stilling the currents, 'never not-being' cupping both images in a holy union that seemed to exist and cancel itself simultaneously;

surrendering surrender: implying you could release the unreleasable by adding a verb to a still-standing noun-verb

and

voiding the void: cancelling the act of cancellation itself, which implied a something out of nothing

On the dusk of his 45th birthday, in the feathered edges of the sun's copper rays, leaning into the rhythm he picked up on the run, he rested in the still place birthed by the lexicon-ed conundrums,

and simply

was