"Nope, this is a dream," I shouted over my shoulder as I went in the bathroom.
"What?" asked Pilar, because she was halfway across the house (the dream) and couldn't hear.
"It can't be five in the morning, because the sun is too high," I shouted.
"Well that's what the clock says."
Everything DID seem just like reality to me. I looked down at my penis as I finished my pee. It looked the same as ever. Often in dreams, things kind of shifted. Sometimes these differences (like the position of the sun in the sky at 5 AM) One time I became aware I was dreaming because I had a ridiculous hard-on that was strangely blade-shaped.
Well that wasn't the case here, but there was no denying the noontime rays of sun coming through the skylight. I decided not to pursue the conversation further with dream-Pilar, lest I get distracted and lose lucidity within the dream.
Lucid dreams are startling, because Everything Is So Damn Real. When I first started having them, I did the usual stuff: fly, try to have sex with people, run around like a nut. But now when I find myself in one, I just really enjoy going with the flow of whatever the dream is, enjoying the richness of detail... inspecting my surroundings carefully... (but not TOO carefully... you have to take little glances at things and just stabilize with the flow of things.... stay nice and steady.)
One time, I held my lucidity past the point where the dream collapsed. When a dream collapses, it's like you're somersaulting backwards into a void. Usually I lose it at this point, or lots of time even before this point. However, on this occasion, I maintained my steady awareness of things right into and through the dissolution of the dream world as it dissolved around me. Before I knew it, I was in another scene, and I was still aware.
Another time, I held my normal awareness right from wakefulness, right through sleep into a dream. That was pretty cool. I kind of flew into the back area of a delivery van. The driver was having some kind of difficulty, so I helped him steer the thing a bit to the side of the road. It was like my entry into his world disoriented him somehow, because once we were pulled over, he seemed fine. I exited the delivery van, and he took off again, leaving me to walk around this unfamiliar neighborhood where there was some kind of flea market. I walked up to one of the booths and started talking to a teenaged girl who stared at me with barely disguised contempt. I didn't reveal who I was or what the circumstances were of my visit, but I got the sense that at some basic level she knew that I didn't belong there. Other times I have had dreams where I engaged with the people in the dream world, they usually didn't seem to demonstrate much agency or self-awareness. The only character who ever listened with interest to me was my son Hunter.
One time I had a lucid dream that Hunter was in. I told him that I was actually having a dream, and he said, "Wow! Well what do you think we should do?" I told him I thought we ought to just go somewhere and have breakfast, so that's what we did. While we were in the restaurant, he asked if I was going to tell the people in the dream that "this is a dream". I said, "Sure, why not?" I stood up in the middle of the restaurant and made an announcement in a loud voice, but people didn't really pay much attention, other than to look over at me, then return to what they were doing. I don't remember what happened after that... probably the dream disintegrated because of me speaking in a loud voice and doing something so socially awkward.
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