Pyjama Day Breakdown

Collapse is the only true common experience

This week I am once again having to come to terms with the political horror of our historical period. I’m so tired of watching the violent thrashing tantrums of the super-privileged. This short story is partly written as a coping mechanism. I hope you enjoy it. In a way at least.

Image credit: Jonathan Foster

1.

Ten past seven, Monday morning. Traffic lights. A building feeling of anxiety. The lights turn green to an aggressive chorus of horns behind him as he watches a cat wandering down the road, such a beautiful silhouette, his finger draws along the inside of the drivers window, tracing the feline. The cat’s pyjamas. More beeping. He’d finish with the cat later, mouthing the words WAIT, pointing downwards, HERE, then a thumbs up as he accelerated away from all that noise.

The cat’s pyjamas. Last Straw. Last Post. Crunch time. My pyjamas. Apocalypse. Acceptance. Sleep.

Twenty past seven. Cars whisking through fading habitats on endless concrete tracks. The scribbles of a mighty child upon this earth. Petroleum and lead and rubber and leather. Eight bull hides for each interior. Bulls raised in cold climates to avoid insect damage. Slaughtered and skinned and tanned and sat upon. Exterior fumes, interior air conditioning. Heavy cloud. Purple like a bruise.

Catastrophic events of this type are becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity greater. More frequent. Do not speak out. Citizens are compelled to accept the catastrophe. Citizens? Accept the Cats ass trophy more like. Ha!

Half past seven. There are huddles of teenagers in groups flowing toward the sprawling campus of The O’Connor School. Something odd. Cars dropping off teenagers. Cars parked by teenagers. Everything so familiar yet nothing familiar. He turns into the staff parking lot for what can’t be the first time. The car finds his designated space.

Seven forty-five. Sitting in the driver’s seat retracing the cat with his finger on the tempered glass. Shattered. Feels. Broken. Feels. Impact. Feels. Nothing. More. Frequently. Opens door and step bare foot onto the resin-bound stone carpet. Bare foot. Something odd.

As he reaches the school’s main entrance the cloud finally bursts. Rain. Teenagers running. Teenagers laughing. Umbrellas mushrooming. Jackets over elbows over heads. Passing through the streaming glass doors like a twig through rapids on a river of plaid. Something odd. He didn’t normally wear plaid

2.

The floor shone like an Andean lake as hundreds of feet carried rain into the main hallway. Mostly slippers, soft and wet sheepskin glued to ethylene vinyl acetate soles. Micro-plastic continents blooming across the mighty oceans releasing tiny droplets. Evaporation. Clouds. The Micro Plastic Water Cycle. Plastic deposits like veins of coal inside the brain, breast milk, liver, kidneys, hearts. Nice slippers though.

Corridors and teenagers and lockers. His classroom, desks in rows, smart board, plants and streaming wet windows. Low level panic like a unnoticed hum rising. Through the door and to the desk. Sit in chair. Forehead on desk top. Tears maybe. Or the rain?

“Yo, sir, you OK?”

His cheek on the desk. Dressing gown clad teenagers. They are EVERYWHERE. Another appears alongside. Something odd.

Head nods. No words.

“OK, cool.” Hesitant, unconcerned, yeah, whatever.

More come through the door to slump at desks. One desk shared. Heads rest upon arm triangles. Phones like autumn leaves. Eyes on the tidal windows. Talk of rain. Of flooding. Of plans ruined. Empty desks. Yawning. Shouting. Shushing. Slowly quietening. Wrappers opened. Heads turning. Chewing. Whispering. His forehead on the desk.

“Like your pyjamas, sir” someone says. Giggles.

He look up, stares, head tilting backwards, mouth a little open, eyes peering along the bridge of his nose. Be Normal. BE NORMAL. His voice maybe? Inside or outside his head? A personal emergency broadcast. BE NORMAL.

“It’s the cat’s pyjamas,” he says. Laughter. Relief. “Good one sir.” Tears or rain rolling down his cheeks like streaming windows.

“Really, are you Okay, sir?” again.

He sits back down, points the remote toward the smart board. A news broadcast appears. Teenagers slump further. People throwing mud at the Spanish King as he is escorted through a flood devastated provincial town. Laughter. Shushing. Voiceover: Catastrophic events of this type are becoming more frequent and their destructive capacity greater. Chewing sound. A bubble popping. Vox interviews. Older talking heads complain of slow response times. Younger ones talk of abandonment and required proactive environmental legislation. Older heads smile and say these young ones today, they’re the future, the younger generation will do what needs to be done. Younger ones talk of inequality and ask why older heads don’t do what needs to be done. themselves? What do we have they don’t? Mounted police disperse the crowds. Humans on horses charging humans on feet as mud splatters across the camera lens. Laughter. Rain. He gets up. Writes something on the smart board.

3.

Half the class raise their hands. He leans back on two legs on his chair. Balance. Careful. Raised arms like reeds in the wind. He remembers water reeds swaying along the salt marshes. His grandfather harvesting after the first snowfall for roofing thatch, a flat cap, grim reaper scythe, smiling like an angel. Sir. Sir. He’s gone now. No more reeds either. Sir. SIR.

He see’s they’re wearing pyjamas. He’s wearing Pyjamas. Lightheartedness perhaps, or relief? Spontaneous rebellion? Aroma of instant coffee coming from the staff room next door. And lightheartedness perhaps. Hard to tell. People joking. Banter. Something terrible broken. Something beautiful in its place. What? What changed?

SIR! He raises his hand to point at no one in particular and three voices begin but only one finishes. A girl. Hands lowered as she speaks. A flutey voice. She is saying something. Everyone is so young these days. Earnest. Sincere. Intense. Her eyes are dynamite.

“What about the phoenix? It rose from the ashes didn’t it? It’s a cycle, everything is a cycle, isn’t it?”

What is she talking about? He looks blank. He is blank. She points at the smart board and he sees his own handwriting. Collapse is the only true common experience.

She goes on, “Sometimes I’ll see different objects align from a particular perspective, you know, like things with no relationship become one thing, like an illusion, when you can see things like witches or panthers. There are no witches or panthers, they just kinda look that way from one viewpoint, You know what I mean? Collapse is a bit like that, there’s a crises from one perspective but not another? Do you know what I mean?”

Another voice comes now. A boy’s voice. Sober and deep but a boy nonetheless. She looks at the boy, nodding.

“Yeah, like the Bronze Age collapse wasn’t a collapse for the Polynesians or Haida people. It was a collapse of a Mediterranean social structure,” the boys voice seems triumphant. The girl says “Yeah,” and another voice says “Yeah, the Sea People were revolutionaries, the world’s first political revolution against exploitation and hierarchy!” Almost festivity in the timbre of this one. He stares at the streaming windows and says nothing.

“We need a new revolutionary wave,” says another

SIR!

He is roused and see’s a classroom full of teenagers in pyjamas with expectant faces, loving faces, beseeching faces, wanting something, needing something from him. Something he didn’t have. Confirmation? Validation? Lies? These kids weren’t throwing mud. Complex, elaborate. thoughtful kids. But no one is listening. He was listening. In his state though. His grandfather would have said his nerves were at him. Couldn’t be getting dressed today. Pointless. Enough now. Drove to the school. Ha ha ha, school. God help us. He sees his grandfather nodding as he smoked roll-ups and squinted through his leathery eyes. Expectant faces morphing to confused. Balance on two legs. Haven’t hit the ground yet. Not yet. Collapse. But it’s coming. Oh yeah, it’s coming alright.

4.

First there was nothing. No time. No light. There was just an infinite formless flowing energy. There was potential where “is” and “what might be” embrace in a deep peaceful sea of unity. Nothingness.

Then a shift. A quantum flux that birthed the smallest self-awareness. A photon. A calm and warm embarkation into being. Somethingness.

The darkness withered, a mini-genesis, new light, faces and sounds, like an awakening, increasing intensity like birdsong sailing across a lake. Louder now, Sharper now.

“Jerry?”

Older faces. Whiskers and crows feet and hide. Scarlet velvet collar. Plaid pyjamas.

“Jerry, can you hear me?”

Who’s Jerry?

On the floor. Arms under, lifting, into chair. Shivering.

“Drink this.” Water in a glass. Calm instructions. “Deep breaths.”

“He’s been acting weird all lesson.”

“Weirder.” Laughter. Shushing.

“Weird how?”

“Like he didn’t know where he was, like he was nuts or something, like he broke.”

“Jerry?”

He is Jerry. He looks at the whiskers.

“We thought we’d lost you my friend,” the whiskers smiling, hand on arm, more faces.

Jerry laughing. “It’s fucking Pyjama Day!”

“Come on Jerry boy, let’s lie down in the staff room shall we?”

More arms. Gentle nudging and laughter.

“What the fuck have we done?” Jerry says, “It was a paradise for fucks sake, a fucking paradise.”

“Okay Jerry, no need for all that, come on now.”

“It was the fucking cat’s pyjamas.”

“Who’s giving the next lesson?”

“Come on, Jerry boy.”

“It’s a collapse” says the flutey voice.

“His or ours?” the sober and deep voice says.

“Everyone’s, Collapse is the only true common experience” says the flutey voice.

“No one’s listening,” says sober and deep voice.

“Nope, no ones listening.”

“Because no one likes a smart arse.”

“Even less than they like civilisation collapse.”

Laughter.

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