Waking Up in Baltimore

I keep waking up in Baltimore. Not literally, of course. It’s just post-REM sleep confusion: those first moments of daze before you are fully awake in the morning when the heat in your room is turned up too high. You dream/imagine many wonderful scenarios for yourself. For several moments you really do believe you are a Turkish queen, Cuban revolutionary, or newly wed in Monaco. Lately I’ve been waking up as a peasant in Baltimore.

It’s because of the confluence of two great events in my life:...