So if I haven't written lately it's because I've been in Reno. Of course, if you read this you probably already know the reason so that first sentence, and now this one, are both redundant.

Reno! It is the best of places, it is the worst of places. Even it's long worn-out slogan tells of the inherent incompleteness, the inferiority complex that shadows its decisions, and the wonderful paradox that is my other home town: "The Biggest Little City in the World".

Here's a town that needs attention, not happy with it's lot in life. "Things are gonna be better for us here", it whispers late at night, as you both clean up the broken dishes from the floor, "different", and somehow, though you've heard this lie a dozen times, you want to believe it still bad enough to take the city back into your arms.

Downtown, as dawn's rosy fingers push the days cards on the blue felt table, the bums are cueing up at the old St, Vincent. The beer-belied out of towners are spilling out of the casinos in punch drunk bewilderment, smiling at their new greasy grey-haired friends and wondering where the action is, and where the money went. T-shirts with eagles or skulls or fighter jets. Tight clothes stretched over long-faded glory like bandages trying to hold middle age and a lifetime of disappointment inside. Into Sundowner they go, into the Jackpot, into Sands, into the Silver Club they tumble, just two days more to sit in front of the slot machines and dream over cheap, free booze. Nobody dreams of winning it big here though, of the big millionaire-making jackpots. Nobody's expectations are that high.

That's downtown. But look up west. The glory of the alpen glow is beaming at you like the aurora borealis from the tops of snow capped mountains, as another beautiful sunset takes its time over the Sierras. Colors God reserves for special occasions with dear friends are spent here nightly, poured over the mountains and splashing into the sky. The sky here lifts you up to it and holds you close like a mother. You breathe in the rain-soaked smells of sagebrush and Nevada sand and feel healthy, renewed and ready to hike further into the spare, secret desert. The bluebird calls you, the hawk, the coyote call you from your little brick square house in the valley.

So there are two cites here, and maybe more invisible ones as well. Cities of strangers, cities of families, of nature, of tourists, of failure, of hope. And with so many places buried, hidden, or even floating up high, the question then of where to live becomes infinitely difficult.