Introduction
The Deep prompts us to reevaluate our relationship to space. For the anglerfish and other abyssal dwellers, cold undifferentiated black extends in all directions. A swim bladder assists in keeping the fish "upright". Above ground, we encounter "upstanding citizens", "upright behavior", and so on and so forth. Their posture is truly impeccable.
More Words
Examination from the perspective of the Earth, which is nearly spherical, does not spell out a preference for us between horizon and "vertizon". The sense that the land we traverse is “horizontal” must therefore stem from the arbitrary definitions of coordinates given on a local scale. The elevation of the language of horizontality into the realm of the planetary (horizon being defined as that which divides earth and sky) carries with it the fact that this division of earth and sky appears to us most often as crossing our vision horizontally, so the local, human-specific perspective is globalized. The term “vertizon” could be used to describe this division between earth and sky instead, and would therefore denote the local plane of traversal as a vertical plane (earth on the left, sky on the right).
The argument here is that "horizon" is an anthropocentric sham. Our lived feeling of this phenomenon is derived from a mathematical convention in which Plane x (the orthogonal ground plane which appears to expand magically from our feet) is considered prior to the introduction of Plane y (that of the actual planet in space to which this ground belongs to, where horizontal and vertical resist definition). It is linked with the "stable" image of a person standing orthogonally to a horizontal plane, pitted against the "unstable" image in which a person standing orthogonally to a vertical plane - see figure. Our eyes are not stacked one atop the other, rather we have mini-horizons connecting our two eyes, so we prefer the horizon over the vertizon. But that is the mind of the pre-astronomer, for we can apply the simple knowledge that gravity acts omnidirectionally and standing on a vertical plane, such as the one shown, is no less unstable than standing on a horizontal plane.
Given the sphericality of the earth, I advocate for the vertizon to take an equal place alongside the horizon in our regard for those distant edges separating earth and sky, complexifying our notion of place-ness just when we were getting comfortable enough to enjoy that sunset. The infusion of vertizon presents yet another opportunity for intentional disorientation that brings us closer to a raw delocalized proto-Nature.