Carlo de Fornaro:
George Jay Gould
Portfolio: Millionaires of America
(1902)

"…any story that somehow manages to slip out around its edges…"

Most days, I feel as though I’m engaged in a contest of DuelingComeuppances. I feel almost certain that one or more of my activities, probably a combination, will ultimately contribute heavily to doing me in. Yet, I persist, if only because I honestly know no better. I don’t do my best, but I also rarely, if ever, really try to do my worst. I inhabit the horse latitudes of human behavior, experiencing far more calm than storm, with inspiration blessedly rare. I understand that living involves accepting certain complicities, that there never was, nor could ever be, immunity from any inevitability. I lack the vegan’s sincere dedication to any ideology. I soothe myself by insisting that at least I don’t kill my meat myself. Yes, I still feel urpy whenever I pass a feedlot, and likely always will. I am not engaged in any activity intended to reform or improve me. I have been known to drink to excess at times of celebration or sincere heartbreak, neither of which really offers a decent excuse for engaging in such obviously self-destructive behavior. I excuse these and many other personal shortcomings by touting how I no longer maintain any shred of tobacco dependence, but I’ve known the attraction to addiction in my time, and the depression that comes from denying even a perverse desire.

I am learning that Comeuppances are not just passion plays between good guys and worst ones. They’re not contests between virtue and its many enemies. They are not merely punishments, either. I might instead think of Comeuppances as level sets, a means of assessment without necessarily implying judgment. Who’s to say whether a well-deserved Comeuppance is bad or good? It first simply is. I might imagine an impending Comeuppance as a kind of Damoclesian revenge, just deserts in the most ironic sense, but that association probably says more about me than it ever does about the actual Comeuppance. Everyone sometimes bites off a little more than they can reasonably chew. Comeuppances can help restore an integral imbalance. Maybe they’re at root only wake-up calls, aching for little more than a minute of undivided attention to insist upon the ambiguous.

Comeuppances need not be terminal events. I know, I think of them as such: a fate finally catching up with its prey, a denouement concluding a story, but other activities often follow. I have survived innumerable Comeuppances with hardly a physical scratch to show for the experiences. Some have been genuinely breathtaking if not precisely life-threatening. Each delivered a fairly crisp and clear warning, often so cloaked in allegory that I struggled to discern its intended meaning. Their underlying intent never once failed to register. Comeuppances serve as significant punctuation, more exclamation point than period, often nothing but a huge honking question mark. They rarely fail to leave a lasting impression. I don’t remember when I didn’t feel simultaneously pursued by several competing ones, each insistent on impressing me with some lesson I probably should have learned long before. I wouldn’t recognize a world that didn’t feature several DuelingComeuppances hovering impatiently around out in my yard.

I am more habitual than I readily admit. I revel in Max, our cat, who I find patiently waiting for me on my footstool every early morning. He quickly climbs up and colonizes my lap, warming me while getting some apparently well-deserved, or at least sorely needed, massage-like petting. He purrs while I consider my world. I think of Max as the one with the habit, though I show up to provide the lap, which I insist he seems addicted to lying upon every morning. I suspect that I maintain similar symbioses with my many Comeuppances. I experience them as independent of me, as something that “just happens,” though I suspect I encourage even the more aberrant behaviors I find myself beset by. I apparently cannot successfully hide from my impending Comeuppances. I might think I’ve ditched one, only to find it curled up on my lap again on some unseasonably cold morning.

I might work much harder undermining my efforts than I ever do supporting them. I am a Janus-faced creator, almost ambivalent to the core. I don’t subscribe to the laser-focus school of anything, and I consider my distractions integral to whatever I eventually manage to produce. I don’t believe efficiencies realistically exist; they’re Utopian delusions peddled by people with feeble imaginations. This world, and every profession within it, remains much richer than any single mind ever imagines. Single-mindedness remains a handicap I rarely need to concern myself about. I think exclusively in constellations, as much noise as signal, often much more noise than anything else. I distantly infer my way toward understanding, busy distracting myself into my enlightenment, my DuelingComeuppances forever battling, hardly ever stopping to consider whether I’m making progress. I most often trade advancement for pure kinetic energy. I consider a rhythmically jiggling leg every bit as productive as the final version of any story that somehow slips out around its edges and into this world.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Comeuppance, #PureSchmaltz