kellanreiterracing

[Open window

Empty bed and chair

Who's that callin'

Ain't nobody there

I look behind me

And I see there's just

Me and the wanderlust

Dead of night

I had a dream

Sky was bright yes and the

Fields were green

I was down the road

In a cloud of dust

Me and the wanderlust]

it's been two years since my last move. two years since the last time i packed the few boxes that hadn't remained packed and shuffled out and up. after nearly four years of constant change the carpet beneath my anxious feet has somehow managed to remain a typical static off white. there has even been enough time for it to accumulate stains that manage to blend into the background. yet can i call these white washed third floor rooms sans views "home"? well yes, perhaps i CAN... could. if the ground weren't beginning to shift and shake beneath the floors.

there is new turquoise hanging like an omen from around my neck. a feather guarded symbol of where my blood runs from, deep in the red dirt mountains of the yet wild west. beneath my thick skin the blood runs blue as dark turquoise and spills just as red as those hills. generations of turquoise, red coral shell beads and signed silver somehow encourage nomadic dreams as they lay dormant in a wooden box painted to imitate an old copy of tolstoy's war and peace or hang proudly from my wrists neck and ears. legacies of sterling, hearts of colorful stone.

the mountains and their hot hot sun call her in; sands of new mexico beckon her home. stories of clovis, las cruces, amarillo and topeka must have something to do with the ringing in her ears. and while his family came from eastern europe and settled directly in the old neighborhood down in the czech and polish 26th and christiana, hers fell from the green hills of eire and baked their way to minnesota, or followed fur trading routes from canada to settle in the lands of the apache and the navajo.

the floor shakes beneath my dueling loyalties. or lack thereof.

she paints deserts and abandoned roads in the south west skies. for the first time since relocating to these country bumpkin suburbs she has color in her face, color found in the jemez gazing out towards taos, wondering how the old santa fe could ever have pulled us so far east, how we wound up in the cold, crowded midwest.

and i remain unsettled, a second generation accidental midwesterner. through all the love i have for my city by the lake i still see it in my dreams: the wide horizons of the great clear west; coming down from the rockies or the old black hills, gazing out at the red rocks opening to the south. i dream of disappearing in the mountains, relying on my red dirt blood to live with the land in silence. just me and the wanderlust. pick up, leaving the cardboard shrouded remnants of the forgotten life before behind, to move on as the sun rises and falls over the breathing mountains. just me and the wanderlust, reaching over the summits, bare feet in the land.