For about four years, there’s been a spot in Port Washington, NY where I toss my peach pits. It’s on the corner of Port Blvd and Ohio Ave. And something started to bloom there since I began this job in Harlem. Legit, I pass this blooming corner daily, throwing more peach pits — more than there ever had been before — upon which I empty out 1/3 of a La Croix Water from a can, after drinking enough to alleviate the oncoming commute’s future indigestion. Maybe this bloom is a peach tree. Then I travel to the state of Ohio, and I bug out upon seeing a stack of solar-charging batteries that’ll probably be not-/misused, and eventually thrown away into a pit of more solar batteries that inevitably rip a hole through the earth. Anyway, I don’t think this NYC has even been the same.
Friday night, I got out of seeing Death Grips at Terminal 5, and it took me about three swipes, a half-dozen beers, warm sake, a vape pen (that I eventually lose), four trains, a cab, three hours, and 15 minutes to get home in Flushing. The D and E are running with the A, the M goes to sleep around 10 PM (y???), and the F was stop-and-go moving through construction. And everyone is just sardined in this subway car: stuffed. I thought I was cursed at first, but luckily I took the first stop on the F, so I had a seat next to a gentleman who was crouched in the corner, on the end, playing an NBA game on his phone, with a phone-piece ear-bud. It’s about 1:30 AM. Everyone is kaput around the 20-minute mark, being completely stopped because of tunnel-work, standing squished, but stiffened, expecting the train to JOLT back into motion at any given moment. And it’s fucking hot.
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People are sweating on people; everyone is looking around impatient… and tired; and there’s this guy next to me (and only the person standing in front of him see this guy) yelling furiously at the game on his phone. Nobody can see the earbud or much of the phone. Everyone thinks he’s getting violent because the train has stopped. The Nativist’s Various Options is going at the same level of intensity in my ears, although nobody has the camera-behind-the-camera view as myself, absorbing both the music’s and situation’s chaotic brink. Though, if they only could hear Various Options’s pulse between the cursive-beat and swelling-twilight, this train car would be a strobe light to others, flickering lights in streaks out the windows to other subway cars passing: a framing of flaying arms, arching backs, twisting heads, poofing hair, misting brows.
A being a non-repetitive sound.
B being one sound repeated.
C being many sounds.
- Natalia Panzer
CUT TO: Die Hard: With A Vengeance. This movie is MAD poignant to me, rn. My morning commute and people staring. “Who do you think you are, Hillary Clinton?” Working off a five-hour sleep cycle. Explosions. “And I’m going to marry Donald Trump!” All this “hair.” Hard trolling. Jumping down a grate to catch a subway. “Not even GOD knows what you’re doing.” Park drive. Subway seating. Smells. Accidentally ending up in New Jersey. International Aspirin. 112 Wall Street. Bro? “Get away from the GOD-DAMN PHONE!” My brother and I running up 8th Ave giving a tour of New York City as 1995’s Twin Towers stand tall behind us in the midday sun. I need a night out. I need to listen to Various Options again.
That bad-boy persona is all about how good Goldie always broke it down; The Nativist is entirely Björk pre-Barney. Y’all, I’m at a run for my life daily, and so are you, so take all you can get. When someone makes apple-orange juice, you take a swig of that because count your days and dollars. If there’s a midway between just chilling and dancing every last bit of patient out your dripping body, Various Options is exactly that, although only an EP so therefore cutting short a plan is merely the fate of design (as every plan forever is within each city limit). Forever, I need you more than you need me. And an eternity in questioning, “Who’s maze is this?”