Vertigo

Chris Jones: Javier Bardem is listening to a doctor explain proprioception, the cosmic process that allows us to know, among other things, the location of our feet in space. He is listening to the doctor while they’re on a sailboat that has tipped nearly sideways on the blue waters off Oahu, Hawaii. In the way that the sailboat won’t tip over entirely because its rudder and centerboard know which way is up, proprio-ception makes it possible for us to do things like climb stairs in the dark; it also makes it possible for us to kick a soccer ball or walk across a high wire or wrap our toes around the nose of a surfboard. The doctor who is explaining the process to Bardem is explaining it well — he’s a respected neurologist named Dr. Tom, and he’s the captain of this ship — but it’s still hard to understand. We’re complicated machines. Proprioception involves muscle spindles, joint receptors, and Golgi tendon organs; it involves the transmission of electrical impulses via the spinocerebellar tract in mushy pockets such as Clarke’s nucleus; and like language and fear and pleasure, it involves, finally, the lobes and fissures of the cerebellum. It’s a miraculous chain of events that we don’t really think about. For most of us, it just happens, our feet and our brains working together like acrobats, and we know exactly where we are.

But for certain people, at certain times, the process can be interrupted. What was once automatic becomes manual or, worse, it vanishes altogether. The loss of proprioception can happen to the elderly through a general degradation of their infrastructure, which is why they’re prone to falls. It can happen to the seriously ill, to people who suffer, for whatever terrible reason, a short in their electrics. It can happen to drunks, which is why they can’t put one foot in front of the other. And it can happen to people on sailboats that are tipped nearly sideways on the blue waters off Oahu.