the persistant illusion

Every now and again I have this strange feeling that none of this is real. Particularly late at night, when I leave the relative calm of the office to step into the neon tumult and human clamour of Midtown to race for the subway home to Brooklyn, I have a distinct sense that I am dreaming, one of those feverish monotonous dreams where you know you are dreaming but somehow still cannot wake up. Except that eventually I will wake up again and find myself in Raleigh, and none of this will have happened. I will wake up again in my own bed, my own little stone house, Carolina sunshine streaming through the windows, birds singing outside. God, I'll say. That was weird: I dreamed I moved to New York! And it seemed so real!
What is reality anyway? Why does Raleigh seem so much more solid then Brooklyn? Why am I haunted by remembering absolutely everything? The way the light looked in the winter and the relentless humidity in the summer? How it was to go through the U-Scan at the Harris Teeter in Cameron Village and the route I walked with Garth every morning through our neighborhood? The view from my desk at work and the jokes I used to make with my co-workers?
When will all this -- the light on the river at sunset and the brownstones of Brooklyn Heights and the screech of the subways -- start to seem real? When will it start to feel like my life, instead of some fever dream?