negative zero: spin off bs

it's not so much a mathematical impossibility as it is
a conflict of defined terms.
zero is by definition neither positive nor negative.
therefore to speak of negative zero
it to involve zero in a world in which
it does not belong.

but it can be real, nonetheless, in the human world,
where terms, clearly defined or otherwise,
are continually redefined or recontextualized,
bandied about and mishandled and mislabeled
so that what has an ostensibly objective definition
can be held to mean something else entirely.

in a world that affirms positives and participation,
for example, negative zero exists
to demarcate the disapproval of the one (or zero)
who stands apart.

this in turn forces a question, a thoroughly human question,
of objective reality, mathematical definitions,
and the manner in which the human social fabric holds these things-
literally holds them-
in high or low regard.
for whatever one may be "in truth" and "apart,"
one is also a human being,
and social,
and vulnerable to the effects of other social human beings.

and, whether possible or not,
zero may mean what it cannot mean,
it may try to mean what it implicitly is not...