Revertigo: An Off-Kilter Memoir

Prologue

3 Pro­ logue On Ross Is­ land, ­ across the Wil­ la­ mette from our home at river mile four­ teen, ­ there’s a great blue heron rook­ ery in the upper limbs of some cot­ ton­ wood trees. Bev­ erly and I love to watch these enor­ mous birds, some of them four feet tall and weigh­ ing ­ nearly eight ­ pounds, as they ­ gather at their nests, cir­ cling and land­ ing or tak­ ing off from the slen­ der­ est ­ branches. It seems astound­ ing to me that crea­ tures so hulk­ ing can main­ tain their ­ places up there as the wind blows, as the rains fall. When I see them at their most el­ o­ quently ­ poised, when every­ thing ­ they’re hold­ ing onto is sway­ ing and swirl­ ing, I usu­ ally lose my bal­ ance, which is why I make sure to sit while watch­ ing them. c At the cen­ ter of Re­ ver­ tigo: An ­ Off-Kilter Me­ moir is an at­ tack of un­ re­ lent­ ing ver­ tigo that began—out of no­ where—on the morn­ ing of March 27, 2009, and ended on the eve­ ning of Au­ gust 12, 2009, as sud­ denly as it had begun. Those 138 days ­ seemed so anom­ a­ lous, such a weird and iso­ lated pe­ riod in my life. Prologue 4 As I began writ­ ing about it, I re­ al­ ized it would make no sense—or­ rather that it would seem to make too much ap­ par­ ent sense—if I told the story in a tra­ di­ tion­ ally struc­ tured, con­ ven­ tional me­ moir. When ­ you’re not in per­ fect bal­ ance, when body and world are askew, every­ thing fa­ mil­ iar is trans­ formed. ­ There’s a de­ sta­ bi­ liz­ ing of the self and its en­ coun­ ter with the world, a whirl­ ing of space and time. Noth­ ing is ever still. ­ Topsy-turvy rules. To cap­ ture what it felt like to be un­ ceas­ ingly ver­ tig­ i­ nous would re­ quire a match­ ing ­ off-kilterness of form, a struc­ ture that was ten­ u­ ous, shift­ ing, un­ pre­ dict­ able. I also re­ al­ ized that, for the pre­ vi­ ous three years, I’d al­ ready been writ­ ing this book. My work was ex­ plor­ ing bal­ ance and its loss, how the ­ forces of un­ cer­ tainty and sud­ den ­ change and dis­ place­ ment had­ shaped me since child­ hood, as it ­ shapes many of us, by re­ peat­ edly knock­ ing me awry, re­ quir­ ing me to react and adapt fast, ur­ gently re­ align my hopes and plans, even my per­ cep­ tions. It ­ seemed as ­ though my life, and my writ­ ing about my life, had been pre­ par­ ing me for just such a time of rad­ i­ cal ­ off-kilterness. I kept wait­ ing for the book to or­ i­ ent it­ self in the usual way, only to find that dis­ or­ ien­ ta­ tion was its dom­ i­ nant mode.­ Looked at as a weird and iso­ lated pe­ riod in my life, the 138 days of ver­ tigo were one thing, with a be­ gin­ ning and end, and I ­ needed to take that look. But I came to under­ stand that there was more to the story. For in­ stance, there was some­ thing in­ ac­ cu­ rate in the whole no­ tion of be­ gin­ ning and end as hav­ ing fi­ nite form. I re­ al­ ized that the shape of this book ­ needed to be open, not lin­ ear, and not ­ static. c I ­ wasn’t going to have a prob­ lem. It had been al­ most eight ­ months since my ver­ tigo had van­ ished, and I was walk­ ing fine. No cane, no stum­ bling or grab­ bing onto sta­ tion­ ary ob­ jects for bal­ ance, no ­ neckand -shoulder-locked gait. Very lit­ tle swoon­ ing. Swoon­ ing only Prologue 5 oc­ curred when—as hap­ pens to many peo­ ple—I did some­ thing like look up at the ­ clouds while walk­ ing. Yes, I was back to al­ most nor­ mal. Ex­ cept there were maybe a few odd­ ities, such as get­ ting ­ light-headed when I ­ merely ­ thought...