The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

The Bureau of Dreams to be Continued

Page 163

Miriam was sharper, quieter, and more dangerous in debate. She kept a notebook labeled “Official Nonsense,” where she catalogued every contradiction uttered by faculty. She had a knack for quoting Simone de Beauvoir in ways that made the boys in her dorm visibly uncomfortable. Her declared major was anthropology, but she was really studying the rituals of institutional absurdity.

They bonded over a shared disdain for the campus’s obsession with “relevance.” One afternoon, after a lecture on Kierkegaard that devolved into a discussion of LSD, Calvin leaned over and whispered, “Do you think any of this is real, or are we just props in someone’s dissertation?”

Miriam didn’t answer. She just tore a page from her notebook and handed it to him. It read: "The illusion of choice is the first lesson in any bureaucracy worth its salt."

Their rebellion was subtle. They formed a two person club called “The Department of Unfulfilled Expectations.” They held meetings in the library’s basement, where they read aloud course catalogs in dramatic tones and awarded each other honorary degrees in Disillusionment. They submitted essays written entirely in footnotes. They once staged a silent protest by attending class dressed as mannequins.