Waking up in Baltimore

Here’s a bit I posted on the Book View Cafe blog a month ago. BTW: I’m no longer 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: I’ve just moved from the country to the city, and for several weeks I’ve been watching back-to-back episodes of The Wire.

You remember The Wire: heroin trade, corrupt government, people asking if their hair looks good just before they get whacked. The latter was a running joke towards the end. It was always said by a person with French braids. The joke being once your hair is thusly subdued it will always be perfect. In ten years it will look exactly as it does now. It even stops growing because the tight braids prevent breakage. You don’t need new hair, so your body doesn’t send out the hormones that incite growth.

Considering how lazy I am and carefree life is in French braids, I’m surprised I’ve never had it done. I think the cost for doing white people hair puts me off. It’s prohibitive. Nobody wants to do white people hair because it’s unruly and smells funny. It’s just too expensive for the likes of me, lazy as I am.

At any rate, with my head filled with scenes of B’more when I go to bed at night in a place without stars to guide me, my navigational system got out of whack. I continue to wake up in Baltimore.

Tonight I start binge-watching Breaking Bad. I hope I like waking up in Albuquerque.

Sue Lange