\ Zero Divisions

After my run along the beach, I dreamed of waking up to a bed covered in blood, unfurled the bandages from my ankles and brimmed with pride, how I had broken through the wall of pain, the final step in my regimen where instead of ignoring my limitations, I embrace them and scissor-step alongside. These are the stages of loss, and I had accelerated my development so as to skip denial and bargaining, particularly the latter with its too-hard-to-bear insult-to-injury quality. Bargaining deserves its own 5-stage process of death and dying. I am willing to do it, but god, I hope it never comes to that.



Your feet sink even deeper into the sand when no one is around, the wind picks up just a bit, the view distracts more from the task at hand, and worst of all, you notice that there is ever more driftwood along the beach, weathered perfectly smooth by the salt and sand, impossibly comfortable and ever inviting park benches lonely for a visitor. As the number of pros outnumbering cons approaches infinity, you realize that eventually you will essentially have no choice but to stop and rest. I give in to my impulses more quickly than ever, and it’s mostly based upon my understanding of fractions. It’s, it’s.



Running home is even harder, because you somehow expected the wind to be at your back this time, and you suddenly understand that you were never running headlong into it, but that the current was mocking the very waves at your feet, the air crashes about you from above, makes it feel like a one-dimensional wall in front of you when it is really all around, adding not just to the resistance of your movement but to the gravity of your existence. The mental devastation is what makes it so much harder to run all the way back, and makes you stronger as you imagine your feet would sink into concrete and asphalt much as they do this sand, how much heavier you have become from the sacred and profane and searching exercise.



Every time I go out, I believe that I will finally know all there is to know and then be ready for my next new passion, and there is that wind hitting at all directions, I am curiouser and curiouser, and the difficulty of understanding this has created a brand new furrow in my brow, and for the very first time I am starting to like how I look, weathered.