Kamisaka Sekka
Fishing Village,
from the series “A World of Things (Momoyogusa)”
(1909/10)

"I suspect the Quantum plane recognized my presence, as did I."

Once I started Discovering my Prosperities, my discoveries began to expand in earnest. The exercise was apparently not merely a matter of Discovering another Prosperity, but of stumbling upon others, many others. Having only started Discovering these additional Prosperities, I lack sufficient sample size to declare the potential I might have plugged into, but this series appears limitless from here. An unknown number of undiscovered Prosperities seems to stand before me now. I cannot see into any future, but this unknown certainly feels as if it’s infinite from here. Infinite could mean the equivalent of unknown. I need not necessarily interpret it as being an unimaginably large number. A single unknowable will do, but the potential seems much greater than any finite number, even though I could not possibly know how many additional Prosperities might be necessary to maintain this sense of infinite potential. I might estimate as many as an odd billion or so.

My point in even mentioning this phenomenon might be to merely highlight the accompanying feeling. Prosperity doesn’t seem like a static state, but an expanding one, with additional Prosperities more or less continually being uncovered, the sum total of which serve to better define its presence. Could there ever be a static Prosperity, one that isn’t continually expanding? I wonder while not questioning my latest discoveries. Since I began this series, I have been Discovering additional Prosperities, to the point that I’ve convinced myself that titling this series Prosperity was undoubtedly an innocent error. I might have titled it Prosperities instead, except my subsequent Discovering had not yet uncovered incontrovertible evidence that I must understand Prosperity to be a plural; otherwise, it just makes no sense. It’s also a verb in practice, one of those unfortunate nominalized verbs tamed by grammarians but never in practice.

I cannot overstate the magnitude of the mistake resulting from denoting Prosperity as a static noun. Its very vitality was replaced with a shoddy, single-dimensional placeholder lacking the essential vitality that simply must accompany any actual Prosperity. It could never have been a possession. It might have been reasonably achieved, yet its artificially assigned noun nature too easily misled its innocent pursuers. It’s most like a force field in practice, in lived experience. Physicists insist that all matter amounts to swirling masses of atoms and molecules, yet we insist that substances possess finite presences. At the quantum scale, the absurdity of such assertions becomes clear, but none of us have access to quantum scales. We must imagine the realities we cannot perceive. These require both knowledge and belief, for belief alone must prove inadequate to successfully conjure up much understanding. I have no actual access to my quantum self, yet I believe he accompanies me everywhere. My quantum Prosperity plane seems a similar presence. It seems to continually spawn fresh instances of this by now familiar presence, until my Prosperities have finally become a reliable part of my existence, now and presumably going forward.

Yesterday, I encountered a Prosperity that I had long experienced little more of than the shadow. It manifested before me as clearly as any prior Prosperity had ever emerged. I was re-re-re-re-reading my recently published Cluelessness, a book I self-published earlier this year. I have probably read through its various iterations a dozen times between first draft and final proof, and I was reading it again in preparation for a book signing at a local bookstore. I was feeling my usual self-consciousness, a little impoverished, as if the book might not be quite the quality I had originally intended it to be. It was obviously too late for me to change its contents, but I wanted to find a chapter or two that might be worth reading aloud in the unlikely event that an audience or an interested potential reader wanted the author to read them a story. Rather than Discovering a book filled with near misses, I surprisingly discovered that the book had been incredibly well-written. All self-promotion and humility aside, this book I held was damned good. I felt myself swelling with an unfamiliar emotion. I blushed. Could that be pride?

I realized in that moment that I’d untapped another Prosperity, for I was experiencing what it must feel like to be a skillful author. I sensed the presence of a virtual tweed jacket with leather elbow patches, one of the earliest images I’d held for what it must feel like to be a successful author. I realized in that moment, in that Discovery, that I was inhabiting a previously only imagined Prosperity, and that I had inexplicably arrived and I no longer had to try to believe it might one day be true. What made that reading so different that I felt astride the role I’d long aspired to fulfill? That question didn’t matter in that moment. I was smack dab in the middle of a new Prosperity and all, literally, ALL was in that moment, right with my world! I recognized that this Prosperity was not merely a skill, but a gift. Whatever practice had led me to it, it wasn’t deserved or even earned. It felt bestowed. Then, my role became, in that moment and forever going forward, to believe and live up to what that role entails.

I sat at that signing table in the entry of that bookstore for three hours without selling a single book. A few stopped to inquire whether I was the author. A couple engaged in some light-hearted questions and answers. One or two distantly remarked that they found the book’s premise “interesting,” without buying. It was a Saturday morning, and people were not looking for a Philosophical, Historical, Autobiographical, Fiction to color their perspective. They entered the bookstore looking for Waldo, as usual, and found a successful author there, reading his own work, and feeling prosperous beyond all reason. I suspect the Quantum plane recognized my presence, as did I.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz