Face to face with copper wires

There are other points of view - there are only other points of view. I am already composite - you are copper wires. You keep talking back, and I get so mad. What gives you the right to speak to me? You do not even have a body. It makes me want to rip you limb from limb.

Yesterday, as I was shooting up with ink, you called me from the Green Zone. The frayed cable still around my arm, I put down my syringe and asked you how the weather was. Fine, you said, but rather hot, and I am all out of sunscreen. Can you send me some? I suppose so. Get it from Amazon - if you spend more than ten thousand dollars they will deliver it for free. Alright, I said. Anything else? Yes, you said. The new issue of Queercore World. And cake mix.

An explosion in the distance vibrates down the line. I have to run, you said, they are shelling the hotel again. Okay, be careful. I will, darling.

I hang up. Staring at my syringe, emblazoned with the faces of the Germany World Cup squad, suddenly, I no longer feel like it. I put my hands over my face and start to cry. I do this for about thirty minutes, and then get bored of it. I consider killing myself, but decide against it. I turn on the radio. Alex Turner from the Artic Monkeys is giving a lecture on Radio Four about the Marxist theory of surplus value. In his own work, he says, he leans heavily on the Post-Althusserian theory of the subject, as developed especially by Jacques Ranciere and Alain Badiou.