the V.R.5 collapse: the vertical stalk lies down
I felt awakened to a basic dimension I’d neglected during years of upright movement, of standing and running and stopping and jumping, of walking endlessly upright from one side of the court to the other. I had understood myself for years as basically vertical, an odd forked stalk of stuff and blood. I felt denser now; I felt more solidly composed, now that I was horizontal. I was impossible to knock down.
Context
The horizontal turn, whole: Hal renounces the tennis body's founding axis. All those "years of upright movement... walking endlessly upright from one side of the court to the other" resolve into a self he'd only ever understood "as basically vertical, an odd forked stalk of stuff and blood" — and lying down, out of the game's vertical economy for once, he feels "denser... more solidly composed... impossible to knock down." The one posture the sport can't use is the one that finally feels safe. To stop being a tennis player is, precisely, to lie down.