>Other times I would be in an empty city, and I know I'm in a dream and I can do anything, but instead I stare straight at the sky which is always gray and bleak, and I force myself to consciousness.
>

Let yourself go, man! Your lucidity is your paintbrush, the dream your canvas, and your imagination a palette. This is the ultimate virtual reality, where nothing is real, and yet everything is. In dreams we can see, touch, hear and be a paradox, an irony, or a gerund (especially a gerund...you know about the gerunds *wink*), or any number of other succulant literary pleasures. We can smell downright foul, and no one need hold his nose as we pass by. We cannot hurt anyone else there, only learn the self in and out. Stretch your perception, explore your imagination, suck your dreamy teeth into that slimey sponge we call a brain and SUCK HARD!

Why "force" opportunity away? Why even pause?

Is this a fear of choices, options or exploration? Is this a deep-seeded (Or is it "deep-seated"? Perhaps you're in one of those wickerwork chairs that Gramma always yelled at you for kneeling on because they were expensive to repair, and it has finally worn through at your latest inopportune sitting-- this'll learn you. Following a violent *CRACK!* your rear end pokes through the caning in an unsightful manner, and as your feet flail helplessly in the air before your bulging, panicked eyes, the edge of the broken ratten digs deeper into your spine...) mistrust in the self? An overtrust in fate? Apathy? Exhaustion? Cynicism? Disbelief? Is this the death of the wonder of imagination?

Listen to Doctor Dags: Find a wildwood and dance naked to twisted tunes until you forget how hot/cold the air you're breathing is and how bleak the sky is because, by then, it will be night and dark as the emptiest space, and all will be yours to fill with your wildest dreams. And if you have an extra thought to spare, take me with you too, for I do not have lucid dreams.

Yet.