sixty nine sets, a generic story about a political prisoner

Why, he asked, why did you do it. These are my answers, to his question.

1. From this reign of terror, spirit is unabled to return to the concreteness of the realms of culture…(Hegel)
2. This documents how a woman became less alienated. A woman who is this thing. A gangstress who was/is jailed.
3. A woman not a writer. He is a writer, became a writer, you can blame her for this
4. She is this thing. a gangstress who was held as a hostage. A woman who is neither a writer nor a psychopath. He is a writer, became a writer, you can blame me for this. He writes, you read, you speak in voices hidden and masked
5. Words are the smallest ideological units, he says. There are too many images.
6. This is a story about a set of characters. None of whom is correctly named. This story also contains non-human characters. Some of them have purpose, most do not.
7. The characters who feature in this thing, only one of whom is her, in this story that she is a multiplicity. There are two of us, then three. Already this is quite a crowd.
8. There may appear to be a narrative in this story, but I can assure you that I am not a story.
9. There is much difference, repetition and misrepresentation in this thing.
10. The gangstress waiting to leave. Night and Day, the villain, a political prisoner waiting and hoping.
11. The story is written in different tenses, but its about memories that have already happened. Sometimes in this thing it is written in the non-tense
12. We were not innocent like Kafka’s Josef K. Nobody told lies about me and him, we did the things they arrested us for.
13. She, that is I, trafficked people, drugs, bedrooms, guns and other things. He dealt in words and dreams. he was not innocent.
14. We were in jail, mostly our cells overlapped, our beds overlapped, our lives intersected…
15. My name is now Me-Ti, it used to be something else. (He insists I say ‘í’ not she, I scowl at him, he is laughing at me)
16. I read Hegel in prison. I fell in love. There were no spaceships, no technology that refuses to talk to a character, music that cannot be heard, no mute keyboards. Words that have no meaning.
17. I was not allowed a phone. My washing machine could not speak to me.
18. the story which has ended has not ended cannot end.
19. i am writing this in Moscow, i am writing this in London. i am writing this from memory. i am writing this because he asked me to. i am writing this because I have to.
20. You and I read Hegel in prison.
21. This act it gives up the specific quality of the ethical life, of being the simple certainty of immediate truth (Hegel)
22. Talking voices just beyond your ability to understand them.
23. It was tomorrow, wasn’t it? Or will it be yesterday? or will it be only the present after all ? The present after today?
24. This story is written in my third language…This story is made up of a set of processes, the story is a process which desperately wants to leave with him.
25. The story wants to be interrupted, the story comes with bookmarks, page numbers, chapters, sub-chapters, headings, music. A place, places and other places. There and here and over there. Geographical, networks, temporal.
26. My forgetfulness is not noticed. Only the regret of leaving without him. We were separated.
27. The thing is political. (i hate capitalization, who invented this ?)
28. i read romantic comedies in prison. i read deleuze and kristeva in prison
29. my name used to be something else, i became me-ti, i killed people, you killed people…
30. the story is not linear. the story pretends to be linear, it misinforms you
31. the story cannot go back to the state it was at the beginning.
32. it is always about something. there are consequences. there are things.
33. i held his hand in the convenience store, how did i let go of the hand of the political prisoner ?
34. a thing in an empire of signs. talking voices just beyond our ability to understand them. the talking species.
35. this thing is to be put on the shelf in the library on shelves painted modernist grey.
36. my contraceptive implant stopped working.
37. it’s not the beginnings and ends that count, but the middles
38. it was tomorrow, wasn’t it? or will it be yesterday? or will it be only the present after all ? the present after today?
39. the story is made up of a set of processes, it is a process which desperately wants to leave with him.
40. the story wants to be interrupted, the story comes with bookmarks, page numbers, chapters, sub-chapters, headings, music. me and him.
41. i was released because the gang aligned itself with the fascist state
42. i am becoming other, i have become other
43. a place, these places and other places, there and here and over there geographical and non-geographical networks, time and becoming.
44. a thing is political, everything is political.
45. i worked quietly between a hostage and running away, i became two, when threatened i left.
46. a woman and her child travels across the world. with my baby on my hip I took the line of flight before they could harm it or me — what were the names of the people who were killed? did they mind being forgotten?
47. this story is not linear. this story pretends to be linear, it misinforms you.
48. a new name, a new identity. the baby’s name became shen-ti… is that why i did this?
49. the story, like all stories is always already plagiaristic. the story cannot go back to the state it was at the beginning. i cannot speak of my life before i became a prisoner.
50. it is always about something. there are consequences. there are things, there are non-things
51. i am, finally, the story about somebody
52. years pass, not too many, some. the child grows. i never forget to miss him. i find him released in a city, surveilled, tracked, living in a virtual prison. i make arrangements.
53. i work for K, i am still a criminal, i work in black hotels, the police will never come for me.
54. he teaches hegel, to teach hegel is to be a criminal in this society, he says.
55. absolutely this is a thing that is a plagiarism.
56. the thing is put on the shelf in a virtual library. In the place we live in the shelves are painted grey.
57. i am becoming other, more arrangements are made through the black hotel. gardenia run by two ravens
58. he leaves on a ship destined for vladivostok, travels by train, taxi and walking, it is winter in russia
59. we meet again in moscow the black hotel, i introduce him to shen-ti, his child. i take him to london. he cries.
60. i am this thing. a gangstress who has manipulated everything to see him. becoming…
61. he was a political prisoner. we concede nothing, we dream the same dreams.
62. sometimes he thinks the knock on the door is the secret police
63. i am this thing. we have learnt to speak. we have never stopped speaking.
64. i am this thing sitting in the black hotel.malcolm in new york with them.
65. the child is quite big now, it can stand upright, i think this is about whether i should have another one
66. this is all the prison i have been able to dream. i tell him.
67. it’s enough, he says, after reading these lines of text, we cross the cathedral square.
68. we are this thing the three of us together, already this is quite a crowd.
69. I am this thing, call me me-ti