Atlantis Vertigo by Christopher Bradley Dedicated to Don Chris (Dogwhistle) Ian Jason Bowie Scott Shauna Every Poet Whose Challenge Arises With The Changing Time and The Crystal Princess. 4/14/00 12:51:26 AM They announced it in August In the Metro West Convention Center Under the Pulsing of a Revolving E On two screens on the outsides of a Green Argon Laser. The city was going to rise To the top of the spire At the epicenter of the Emerald field Near the intersection of Spadina and Front. Moments after the announcement The club kids were moving through the crowd With the multicolored slicks Dated October 23. The 23s were signifigant It was as if they had stepped out of the Stars to me December the date I had started making money October the day I would get out. I had it in the back of my mind It would be my last trip to eternity And it would be fabulous And there would be nothing to alter the course of events. It would be the end of a Trilogy The end of an Era The conclusion of a compacted year Of absolute entrenchment in potential jeopardy. I called Berns and asked for a discount ticket on the day of the show He put me on the guest list The guest list to the city in the clouds A circular flywheel in space. I was hoping to see Stormtroopers one last time Before the rhythm ebbed and my heart would start to grow old. I was 19 and my affair with Canada was about to end. Canada was a blond woman in black stretch pants Her long curling hair was drifting away into Ontario It had brushed my chest with sunglassed vision more than once in an eternal sea of hot chocolate in the back seat of the Shadow behind Tim Hortons and in a roadside motel in Windsor on travels to Detroit. Canada was moving in with other people People with herbal remedies for glaucomatic presidents Whose armed forces moved quickly with Uzis and Axes While the frost drifted lower toward the edge of America. I met her in her small apartments And watched her slowly siphon away my liquid assets Forgiving her wiles knowing that at some point the copious entanglements would come to a conclusion. In any case the Tower was there for the climbing And if there is a Tower to climb Then there is the reason for climbing it Because it is there. October 23rd arrived And the Gardiner Expressway rushed by in the late afternoon Minolta EDS Ford and Scotiabank Greeted me in their green bush form. I slid over the bump at 100 kilometers And noted the presence of an emergency telephone As the sidewalk to the right passed And then it was there Spadina Exit. I passed the closed Dome of the stadium Remembering the Blue Jays game I had taken the Pleasuredome barmaid to Maybe three weeks earlier. We had watched them play Chicago and visited The Olive Garden along the strip. She'd told me she had a Marine boyfriend and I'd ignored that fact And kept the conversation going All the way back to the Rainbow Center. I parked in back of Queen Street Down past the Pizza Pizza at the intersection opposite Speakers Corner The place where I had danced On Much Music Broadcast to the Northern World. It was a cool but comfortable evening The lamp posts began to cast glowing photons on the pavement And I passed the intersection of John and Mercer Remembering the place that was there before it changed to Oz. An industrialized nightclub that was called The Factory where I took my friends and I met the Roses While dancing in a Neon green Labcoat purchased from South Pacific Surplus Before I graduated with honors. The Factory was the origin of rave in Toronto When Ian spun Messiah and Apotheosis With the launch into bounce mode With Rotterdam Termination Source - Poing. Back before he changed stations Sheppard twisted disks there And set the metropolis on fire With his Techno Trip Compact Discs. Nothing could stop Oz from being beautiful except for the winged monkeys who decended on the child-like munchkins who were only trying to follow the Yellow Brick Road. I continued to wonder as I flowed into the soccer garbed massive at the base of the citadel Who is the Great and Powerful Oz and why does he project such a frightening spectre? Could I rub my purple and green sneakers together and Find my ticket back to Kansas? Or would I have to seek out Dorothy The Crystal Princess And ride on the heels of her ruby slippers transforming from the Tin Man back into a simple farmer? There was no music at Dusk But there was a sharp green light Gliding around the cylindrical structure beckoning into the fog. After my contemplations and greetings to groove riders and strangers of all sorts I signed the third page Was waved through security And stepped through the door. I'd already found my Purple Window Sky and I was grinning knowing they would never discover What was already in my spine. I was alone in the ebb of humans More alone than I had ever been Ecstatic that there was no chain to hold me to earth Ready to take the Tour of the Universe A close substitute for the Millennium Falcon. I was to be the closest to the Moon that I had ever been The Black Raybans shielding my dilated Pupils covered the fact that I would never fly Never pilot a shuttle like the one I commanded in Seventh Grade The one I commanded into implosion and fiery death in Alabama. The Speedball Surface Cleaner in nineteen eighty eight had made certain I would never pass an eye exam without lenses. The elevator stood before us as we anxiously waited The boy in the orange Fresh Jive shirt with the long hair And the girl with the twist tied pigtails sucking on the clear magenta pacifier attached to a whistle strap around her neck The people in Addidas stripes and painters caps And shirts with the Atlantis logo stenciled in black on rainbow tye dye. The soft electric sound of the bell sounded And we climbed into an empty cell Standing in noiseless anticipation during the smooth sensual voyage to the pinnacle of Architectural wonder. When I was in sixth grade I had been up there briefly Looking down and hoping to see from the observation deck The massive shopping center called Eaton On Yonge and Dundas where I had shopped with Robin and Isaac and Casey and Shannon and DeEtte. I opened fortune cookies in Chinatown and bought Sunglasses with straps and a Bryan Adams tape to listen to on my generic walk-man in the Train on the way back to my side of Niagara Falls. What my eyes showed me when the door opened was entirely different from that time. It took my ears a fraction of a second to recognize the audio But it was somehow different than what I had heard when I first came home from Chicago. The track phased the Shamen's voices through space between multi-dimensionally arranged speaker housings And before I knew what I was up to I had asked three people who was spinning The answer had been Ian. I circled around the outside of the centered ring and found the Tall Dark haired Jockey standing with one hand at a headset at his ear. The circles on the Mark II plates were slowing and quickening as his fingers manipulated the vinyl I watched him slide the pitch bar up toward the +8 marker He organized the flow into a white label. When he was done he turned and smiled He knew that I wanted to know what he'd been up to He handed me the slip cover for the single And I looked at the circuited design Wishing that I knew where on earth he'd discovered it. I let the cover rest on his crate and walked into the crowd. People were dancing against Virtual Reality Projected on the walls In the gaps where the souvenir stands would have been on any given day I tried to find space to let my arms fly and my feet shuffle But I was beyond excitement And the doughnut ring of the Cement Nail was becoming smaller as the elevators brought the teeming humanity into the sky. I decided to drop back to earth and take the Tour. The Tour of the Universe was a Computer Generated flight through a quadrant of the Galaxy that I had never before seen Girders of space stations and Planets and Constellations whizzed past Burning jets of color into my perspiring retinas. The seat I had strapped into tilted with the whole thirty member audience And my blood poured into my feet while my head stumbled on visual sketches of Android controlled vessels. I was lost in the Cosmos for five minutes in a physical man machine interface Wishing that I could never stop coming to the end of Gravity's Rainbow. In the middle of it all I remembered Tron and The Black Hole and Blade Runner and The Terminator and had a thought to pray that one of Gibson's novels would make it to film. I had a vision that I might someday try to put the whole kaleidoscope of HallucinoGen-X into print. And it was quickly forgotten as the Falcon swiftly landed and it's razored talons gripped the earth Ripping up the ground And needling my tear gassed brain Like "Good Bye Blue Skies" Just before the lights came back up. As I left the Pod and carefully set my feet on each stair I looked ahead to the tilted floor of the ramp And set myself into careful motion Swaying with the chosen thirty. Some said that the end was near I could see that the beginning was near And that there would be no turning back from the bath of liquid sunshine of the silicon age. At the base of the tower In the House Cage The Detroit people were playing Dimensional Holophonic Sound "The House of God" A dance fell into my step as I moved toward the elevator And at the entrance I spotted Jason. He was wearing his graphite lenses and smoothing back his blond hair The girl who'd sold me John Player Specials on the Mountain wasn't with him He was alone and headed for the T-Shirt vendors. I banged his knuckles with mine and told him about the Shamen mix and that I'd just come back from the Tour. I kept walking at the elevator and he kept straight on to the vendors and then I was in the frictionless tunnel again. At the top things had changed People were sitting on the rug with their backs to the glass And there was a little bit more space to dance I stood for a bit and just took in the sound piercing harmonic frequencies at enormous decibels in hyper-clarity Bass guitar samples that made the high ground shake Frenetic loops of syncopated swing Jazz drums Sputtered hiccups of Triangle and Sawtooth wave modulating in burst pulses. I was inside a lightning bolt of Audio watching the frantic motion of hip cracking thigh twists and knife handed jabs at the air. People wearing Sun-In and Electric Kool Aid in their hair passed as the Chinese Dragons of firecracking Wavesample barraged the pulse of my heart. I nearly cried at the beauty of the smiles on their lips and the smiles on their linen A warm tear ran down my right cheek as I smiled back and I swallowed it. The salt hit me and I realized that it was time to drink. Liquid Adrenaline was there. I had never directly competed with them So I let them fix me a drink. Banannas Wild Cherry Drink Mix Orange Juice and L-Phenylalanine. I gave them the extra two dollars for the choline because I wanted to see the walls breathe. I took a sip of the wet chipped cherry ice concoction and walked to the steps ringing the outer rim. The Liquid Adrenaline people were smiling too. That's when I lost track of time. I slowly set myself down on the steps and pulled a Benson and Hedges Special King Light Menthol cigarette from my sky blue pocket. The flame flickered on my Bic disposable after I struck the flint. I pulled my Sunglasses down slightly so that I could watch myself start the correct end of the cylinder smoke. I watched the ice swirl in the cup and had another sip. And I started to realize That I was beginning to forget. I was forgetting the sand volley ball pit of my first day away at school Forgetting paint ball in the forests of Illinois Forgetting fraternity football in the Rain of October Forgetting the Grain Alcohol behind the bar in the basement at the Pledge Halloween Party Forgetting Two girls who wanted to buy me a Pizza while I was trying to write a song Forgetting Cool Vaughn the Air Force ROTC and our Fortran 77 class Forgetting Business English and Being Carried to Calculus to earn a C while drunk Forgetting Being Thrown into the Pool after a game of Risk in the living room of the house Forgetting breaking my roomate's custom designed bed Forgetting having the telephone line installed in our Dorm Room Forgetting the picture of the Ace of Spades that Aiston kept hidden under the floorboards of his deck. Forgetting Brian's Japanese American Girlfriend who wound up in bed with another brother after too much liquor. I was forgetting that this had all started in WJJL on Main Street Where Scott and I Listened to The Announcements of the First Parties on CFNY. I was forgetting the computer engineering class at University at Buffalo Forgetting the Physics I took in high school Forgetting how I ran for class President and lost to Eugene Williams Forgetting Quickbasic and the Electronic Data Systems Co-Operative Forgetting my crush on Emily when she sang Bette Middler for our graduation Forgetting the Electronic Music Workshop and the people who taught me to compose Forgetting sitting on Karen's back porch with Rob plotting our final Yawp at class day Forgetting Sitting on the Rock above the Whirlpool with Robin S after Lunch at Emperor of China Forgetting Selecting the Engagement band at Zales in Summit Park Mall. Forgetting the Two Proms I attended with the same girl Forgetting that same girl as I left her on Regent Avenue far behind the Shadow to dive into Nitrous 013 Forgetting my Mother and my Father who labored day and night so that I could attend private schools Forgetting Ike Chris and the Boys Club kids on Portage and Niagara who taught me how to use the Apple Forgetting how to play Axis and Allies which I discovered in Huntsville Forgetting the Role Playing Games and the people I collected and left for my own peace of mind Forgetting the summer Bicycle Camp which took me through Genesee county and Batavia Forgetting taking Jennifer out alone on a Sunfish on Silver Lake during the Regatta. Forgetting a picnic lunch with Tammy who taught me to write poetry to go with my music Forgetting spending an afternoon in a wavepool with Mesha. Forgetting learning to speak Japanese with Charlene and then taking her to a Fugazi concert at Buff State. Forgetting the red haired girl that helped me obtain Depeche Mode 101 on video tape. Forgetting watching my first PG-13 Movie with a long haired Jennifer and seeing Charlie take Tom Cruise's Breath away. Forgetting Bowling at Bowl O Drome on Pine Avenue with Paula and my Brother and Sister. Forgetting Valentines Day at The Red Coach Inn with Michelle. Forgetting Programming Color Macros for C-NET on the Commodore 64. Forgetting Rides out to Glenn's houses in Lockport and Wilson to learn about PC's. Forgetting the thrown Chestnut incident on Lewiston Road near Deveaux manor. Forgetting being kicked in the head by Rob in Hyde Park at a picnic in the Fall. Forgetting my Math teacher who died of Cancer. Forgetting my grandmother whose estate bought me the Ensoniq Sampler. Forgetting my Grandfather who lived just long enough for Joshua to be born. Forgetting my Aunts and Uncles and their families Forgetting that I should have taken pride in my work and not kept it behind the closed wooden door of my tiny goblin green bedroom. In an instant after that final thought she was there My Crystal Princess. She had long brown hair and Ruby Slippers All I can call her now is Dorothy I never knew her real name. I left my half finished cup to rest on the tight fibers of the carpet when she asked me if I was Ok and if I wanted to dance. She put my hands on her shoulders and started slow. While in motion I looked at my chrome swatch and realized that I had been motionless for an hour. I also noticed that I was still holding the cigarette butt. I let the paper fall. I watched her chest heave with the music and followed their downward motion to her feet They rested beneath the edge of her long cotton shirt Beyond the rustling cut strings of torn blue jean And they were clicking together I didn't have to count They had hit many more than three times. I saw her face and she smiled at me and I smiled back her eyes were narrow and I could feel that we were both sweating like the clouds fogging the windows from the outside. Sweat that comes from just under the surface to make the skin of the face glow. It was all over both of us. I ran my fingers through my hair and it spiked up And I saw many figures of her dancing inside her platinum aura. She was here to take me home. In that instant I realized that what I thought was forgetting Was remembering. I had somewhere to go. The end of my time in the Tower in the Emerald Patch was here. I kissed her sweaty lips and we walked past each other. I made for the elevator at the center of the tower and walked past a spinning Disco Ball. There were Gel Lights on the floor in the coridor flashing patterns that flashed like Fourth of July Fireworks against the wall. America was coming back. I remembered standing in the Niagara Falls Convention and Civic Center with my Aunt when I was Five and pouring Pepsi in my eye to put out an ash that had fallen into it. I remembered choking on a lifesaver at the Auto Vue drive in while watching Luke Skywalker fire his Photon Torpedo into the Death Star. I remembered dashing up sloping sidewalks in Winter to drop rolled newspapers into mailboxes. I remembered that I earned my component Stereo system steaming Eggs for Breakfast at McDonalds. I remembered that the Wicked Witch was dead. I remembered that it was always safe to come home. And then I was in the elevator and there was the musty smell of already smoked marijuana And I put my sunglasses on and struck my lighter to another Menthol And the smell vanished as the doors opened And I was vibrating on a tiled floor And I caught the back of Jason's head and then I thought better of annoying him with my discovery after all where exactly does his concern for my travel come into play? He told me once that I'd meet up with him in Hollywood. And I thought Maybe it's better that the continuing party in Oz costs only $2.00. I will go for a little while And let the Medicine run its course. And find a clean bottle of Evian to run through my veins. And then I think The House of God was there through it all There is something of a Soul lurking out there and Maybe it is worth the cost of a careful ride home. But only after a brief visit to Rochester And a long float across a field full of people in England who've been around thirty years longer than I. In a white balloon painted with love While the Sun Machine was coming down.