I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

on the phone to Ann, my family, took the edge off.
    Everything felt so dismal earlier today in Oklahoma I gave up trying to make good time. I needed to adjust to Northeast landscape. By 2 o’clock the green started looking pretty, and I got off the Interstate in Ozark and walked in a park beside the river. Golden green and blue. In the car I started thinking, once I accept the failure of Gravity & Grace it won’t matter anymore what I do—once you’ve accepted total obscurity you may as well do what you want. The landscape in the park reminded me of Ken Kobland’s films…that bit of video that The Wooster Group used in LSD …camera stumbling around the woods, end of winter, stark blue sky, patches of snow still left on the scabby ground…as evocative as anything of that moment when you’re starting to Get Off. Ken really is a genius. His work is pure intentionality, everything is effortless and loaded and I learned how to make films by watching his.
    And now the femme trip’s over. Everything’s different being back in the Northeast. I’m back to basic camouflage. Good country & western song on the radio today: I Like My Women A Little On The Trashy Side .
    Since this is such a dead-letter night, Dick, perhaps I’ll transcribe a few notes that I made in the car:
    â€œ12:30 Central Time, Saturday, now in Texas. Looks just like New Mexico. Thinking about Dick’s video—the sentiment, Sam Sheppard cowboy stuff, is a cypher. The video was shown in response to my criticism of Sylvère’s sentimentality when he writes fiction. I said, you have to do what you’re smartest at, i.e., where you’re most alive. Then Dick pulled the video out as a manifesto or defense of sentiment.”
    LATER THAT DAY —
    â€œI’m in Shamrock now—great emptiness. It feels like a resting point or destination. I forgot to mention, D., the menorah on your refrigerator—that impressed us.”
    THE NEXT MORNING —
    â€œI guess the Northeast hit overnight. When I got out of the motel this morning I was no longer West but East in Shawnee, Oklahoma—there’re hills and clumps of skinny trees and lakes and rivers. It’ll be the same now ’til I hit New York—a landscape full of dreary childhood memories I have no use for. There’s a teariness about the worn-down hills and shivering trees, like in Jane Bowles’ story Going to Massachusetts , emotion overwhelms this landscape ’cause it’s so unmonumental. It elicits little fugues of feeling I’m not ready for. The desert overwhelms you with its own emotion but this landscape brings up feelings that’re far too personal. That come inside out, from me. The West is Best, right? I’m nauseous and asleep and the coffeepot is buried underneath the washstand I bought in Shamrock. But all will change. I miss you—
    Love,
Chris
    â€œThe Wicked Witch of the East”

    Chris reached Tennessee and Eastern Standard Time on December 20. She needed to stop driving and stayed two nights in Sevierville. She went hiking through wild mountain laurels in the national park and bought an antique bed for 50 dollars. On the morning of the 22nd she reached Sylvère in Paris. Peaceful and contented, she pictured them returning to Sevierville together for a vacation but Sylvère didn’t understand. “We never have any fun together,” she sighed into the phone. Sylvère replied gruffly: “Oh. Fun. Is that what it’s supposed to be about?”
    Chris wrote Dick two letters from Sevierville.
    â€œDear Dick,” she wrote, “I guess in a sense I’ve killed you. You’ve become Dear Diary…”
    She’d begun to realize something, though she didn’t think much about it at the time.
    Frackville, Pennsylvania
    December 22, 1994: 10:30 p.m.
    Central Motel
    Dear Dick,
    All day and into this evening I’ve been feeling lonely, panicky,