I had a dream last night (Murphy’s law? Contemporary title)

October 3, 1983

I dreamed of a major social change, of fear, of pain, of strangeness in the streets.

In my dream, I was near the college campus when it began, hiding in a house, afraid to wander through Paterson because there seemed to be some kind of foreign takeover occurring.

At one point, I was in a house with Frank and Jimmy; Jimmy was leaving but promised to come back.

He said he just had to collect some things he’d left in Towaco.

All this came after I had journeyed there from some other location, and at that point, I ached to return to, going out into the streets despite the terror I felt, feeling the strangeness in the air.

I didn’t belong there; none of us did.

It was as if some kind of new religion had taken over the world, dictating new rules for us to follow, new bureaucracies telling us how to live our lives.

Then, I was standing in line holding my daughter in my arms. People around us began to feel sorry for us. I remembered at that point that I had left my daughter’s coat at Rosemary’s house and went in search of it, only to discover Rosemary had moved – or perhaps I was going in the wrong direction, it’s hard to tell. I only know that with each step my daughter grew heavier.

We stopped to look at a street map. We were heading back up the hill towards Haledon and the college campus.

Jimmy came along and said Rosemary now lived with Frank and Dawn used to live. So, we all started for that place. I arrived a moment before Jimmy did. But he had to unlock the door. We went in, climbed the stairs, neither of us certain whether the door had been locked at all.

The next thing I remember I am in a car, driving through streets filled with madness, new rules for everything.

Then I’m sitting in a classroom learning some hard science – at least, it is supposed to be something like chemistry, but all that comes out of the professor’s mouth is philosophy – dark, frightening philosophy.

Some of the women in the class talk about leaving, mysteriously vanishing, and I wonder what the rest of us will do when all the women are gone.

I go for a drive again, only to show up for the next session, most of the women gone, but we’re still going through the pretense of an education (at least the usual liberal education – which is largely propaganda.

I’m scared to death and find myself bracing to run.

But to where? It all feels like 1984 with Big Brother watching, with the changes being imposed on me.