The usefulness of vertigo

[pegkerr]

I had a cool idea this week: kijjohnson has been posting, periodically, that she has been suffering from vertigo. I have had it myself a few times. It's dizziness, of course, but what I particularly remember about it is that perception of angles is bothersome. I feel hyper-aware of how I perceive shapes and angles; everything which ordinarily seems comfortingly present and solid seems oddly off-kilter. So anyway, here's the idea: in Tim Powers' Fisher King trilogy, his characters experience what they call "bar-time" when magical events start happening, or if, for lack of a better term, they enter a magical field. What happens is that they know something is going to happen a split second before it actually happens; ergo, you pick up the phone because you know it's going to ring, and somebody's on the line.

Winter magic is about the solid, summer magic is about the spaces in between. So what I thought is that when Solveig the architect is experiencing something like this, a sense that magical "stuff" is going to happen, she perceives it as "vertigo." Angles seems peculiar, and she has difficulty walking down a straight corridor without running her hand along the wall to keep her oriented. Of course, as an architect, it would both weirdly affect her perceptions in her chosen field and, simultaneously, drive her mad. it also works because vertigo is a mysterious condition, which comes and goes with absolutely no warning and no explanation. It simultaneously warns her ("weird stuff is going to happen") and handicaps her.

Anyway, I was pretty proud of that and I'm going to use it.

Another detail realized this week: Agnes, the putative putative summer magic expert (she's a summer queen, an ex-Princess Kay of the Milky Way) has a bird feeder in her back yard. Fish are the magical totem animal for winter magic, and birds for summer magic.

Comments

[tropes.livejournal.com]

Dude. That's pretty wicked cool.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

That is neat.

Of course I originally read this as "the perception of angels is bothersome," which sent me off into a whole story idea of my own... ;)

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Have you seen this ?

These sound like deeply cool ideas, Peg; yay progress.

[copperwise.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's utterly cool.

[boxofdelights]

That's brilliant.

I hope Kij will be pleased to have inspired you.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Intersting. I can think of several ways this can be played, each with different implications.

Interesting.

B

[wintersweet.livejournal.com]

I just saw this and thought of you:
http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/Asia/Japan/photo38218.htm

I aspire to go to a snow festival in Japan someday...

[malinaldarose.livejournal.com]

That is really, really cool.

[bordergold.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to read it all when it's finished <333

[stinaleigh.livejournal.com]

The magic is neat but I really want to know how you are going to explain 'Princess Kay of the Milky Way' to a non-Minnesotan audience. It makes me giggle.

Cool To Read...

[huladavid.livejournal.com]

...that you're getting good ideas.

Here's some fish stuff I ran across. The back of my mind kept reminding me that there was a scene in _The_One_And_Future_King_ where Merlin changed the young Arthur into a fish, and ran across my copy today. The fish scene is in chapter 5.

I found some info on the totem animal salmon at this site: http://wolfs_moon.tripod.com/birthtotemsalmon.html Might be useful.

There's a tiny bit of info in the book _The_Way_Of_The_Shaman by Michael Harner. On page 60 he writes, "In northernmost Scandinavia, Lapp shamans changed into wolves, bears, reindeer & fish." (Not at the same time, I hope.) Later on (pg. 78) he writes about making your initial into to "underworld" while in search for your power animal. "Avoid an ominously voracious nonmammals you may incounter in your journey...Especially avoid...spider or swarming insects, as well as fanged serpents, fanged reptile, and fish whose teeth are visible."

I also pulled up some basic astrological info, and one characteristic of Pisces is that they're a little too "otherworldly", which (in my mind anyway) may explain why you're having so much trouble figuring out what the fish are up to - they're just operating on a much different plane. In a twist of the Deaf expression I told you about previously, they can't explain their magic because they're literally swimming in it, and don't notice it anymore.

If any of this is helpful, please make what use you can of it, and -of course- best wishes on the book.

[haniaw.livejournal.com]

Cool ideas. I like them a lot.

vertigo- the feeling

[nwl.livejournal.com]

I had bouts of vertigo all through my 20's and some 30's. Then it went away. It was not fun, especially when I was driving. The doctor had no idea what to do and there was no way to reproduce it as I had no idea what triggered it in the first place.