Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu)
“America”: A Native American Woman on Horseback in the Snow
(1860)

"…the promise to be rid of something that's only present by the evidence of its absence."

As I recounted in my ADecentNight story, posted as a part of my Decency Series, both The Muse and my internist have been after me to volunteer for a sleep study at our local sleep center. They suspect, on scant evidence, that I might “suffer” from a condition they call Sleep Apnea, a condition in which I cannot quite muster a belief. I find TheApneas, as a class, to represent the most interesting category of human difficulty, because they are defined as the presence of the absence of something. This formulation makes my head ache, so I avoid thinking about it very much. Even when I think about it, I make no headway toward understanding or acceptance because its very definition seems entirely paradoxical. I’m left failing to interpret a calculus with nothing more powerfully interpretive than my usual meager long division. Further, if found to be “suffering” from this apparently imaginary disorder, the treatment involves being sentenced to wearing essentially a vacuum cleaner over my face, in lieu of sleeping. How such a nightmarish treatment might cure something that, by definition, exists only by not existing, deeply baffles me, and should.

I suspect that TheApneas qualify as first-world disorders. I suppose that without Prosperity, TheApneas would never come up in polite, or any other, conversation. Once freed from the slavery of penury, though, whole fresh worlds of investigative possibility come into focus, areas of interest that could never otherwise garner adequate interest to warrant a second spent investigating them, let alone attempting to cure them. I have been accused of carrying a bad attitude, and I suppose I should have. It’s just that I feel I must confess to being confused. Why me? Why am I suspect of “suffering” from a condition I cannot quite believe even exists? If an Apnea falls in the forest, and nobody’s there to believe it exists, does it still make a noise? Apparently it does, for I recently agreed to enroll in that sleep study my internist had been so impatiently not mentioning since I first confided to him that I would never believe in TheApneas’ existence.

I feel at a loss for how to properly engage in this investigation. I have seventy years invested in my current sleep patterns. As I recounted in ADecentNight, eight hours of uninterrupted slumber seems like an obscenity to me. ADecentNight involves about half that amount of sleeping, with the balance of that most precious of time spent creeping around the house and around my mind, writing. Were I to somehow be cured of this disease I cannot believe exists, what would become of my existence? Yes, I do feel the need to take a nap some days. I rarely wake up feeling groggy, other than the normal and customary confusion that accompanies having no definite clue what I might be writing about that morning. That qualifies as no more than a misdemeanor-class infraction, one that experienced software engineers would blithely dismiss as a feature rather than a problem. One must take great care to avoid even attempting to fix any feature, for that’s worse than useless effort. It can also prove to be extremely dangerous.

I admit to inhabiting a house of cards. With The Muse’s recent broken ankles, we’ve both been reflecting on just what a tenuous balance our lives have become. I chose, when I was ten, to trade what others considered necessary sleep for more awake time, on the condition that I actually spend that time awake. I suspect those who toss and turn regularly do not experience wakefulness then, but a cursed state stuck between indecent sleep and an equally indecent wakefulness. I began meditating twice daily fifty-two years ago, not to dabble, but in dedication to that wakefulness for which I insisted I had been trading my sleep. If I snore, and I only have the unreliable witness of The Muse presenting evidence in favor, for I have not once experienced so much as an errant snort emitting from my mouth in bed, that’s not anything like conclusive evidence. To label me a skeptic classifies me as waaaaay more optimistic than I believe I ever will be about the questionable existence of even the least of TheApneas, and that goes double for the question of whether I exhibit even the worst of the usual symptoms.

I consider these first-world medical conditions roughly equivalent to a budding interest in Mahjong. It seems inescapable, and has, for well over a century now, that middle-aged women, if prosperous, almost unavoidably develop a curious interest in Mahjong. They do not learn Chinese to do this, and might, themselves, speak little better than pigeon English, but they gather together and slap those tiles as if they were part of an Emperor’s entourage. Prosperous middle-aged men develop interests in power tools and barbecuing. Both sexes also stumble into diagnosing, then often compulsively treating, their Apneas. Some will become so obsessed with their diagnosis that they will consent to wearing a Snuffleupagus, vacuum cleaner-like hose attachment on their face in lieu of actually sleeping. Some will even swear on their own stack of Bibles that they experience a great improvement after such treatment. I expect to feel satisfied when I fail to pass whatever test they entice me to take. I am justly protective of my lifestyle, my DecentNights spent half in sometimes fitful slumber and at least half in wakeful contemplation and creation. My world would be worse if I traded my admittedly tenuous balance for the promise to be rid of something that’s only present by scant evidence of its absence.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz