Sébastien Leclerc:
Gelijkheid van dagen en nachten tijdens zonnewende
[Equality of days and nights during solstice] (1706)

Might Be One Day
I suppose I'm not supposed to understand why anyone might choose not to dedicate themselves to encouraging domestic tranquility. This world remains no less beautiful than its potential ever promised, yet some seem to flee from every opportunity to take it easy, to make it easier. I've been writing about our incumbent, a person who never didn't have a couple of screws loose, as if he might one day catch on and start trying to catch up, but I acknowledge he's incapable; supremely incapable, as I might also be.

The tragedy remains that it could still be as it could and should be, but we reject those possibilities, and I suppose we reject the opportunities we receive as poorly-timed or otherwise not quite right. Perfection remains the mortal enemy of good enough, though even good enough has seemed especially unachievable this quarter. So I spent the time coping and hoping, presuming that I might catch myself effectively coping if only I could catch myself unselfconsciously coping, a standard, run-of-the-mill paradox. I might have always been a master coper without knowing I was, simply because I hadn't watched myself enough to catch myself masterfully coping. On some other hand, there might not be anything even approaching masterful coping, it necessarily being an ad hoc occupation, something we engage in out of necessity instead of volitionally; that even attempting to cope better damns the attempt to producing worse results, another paradox.

Hoping has been holding my fallback position. I discovered this quarter that I remain capable of hoping, and what a godsend this realization has been. I was always a better dreamer than I ever was at manifesting. I might not even believe in my ability to manifest anything anymore. I retain my faith in my ability to dream, though, and recognize that without even realizing the objects of my dreams, things seem better when I have a head filled with dreams on my shoulders. The bad guys actively conspire to undermine their imagined empires. Our incumbent's Babylon will crumble just like everyone's before. He's been actively trying to work himself out of office from the moment he swore allegiance he had no intentions of abiding by. The worse it gets, the better it might be one day.

——

Weekly Writing Summary

This CHope Story, CHoping, starts summing up this series. What had I intended? What did I seem to deliver? This final week of this CHope series will look for meaning in this fleeting experience.
Pieter Bruegel, the Elder: Hope (c. 1559)
" … an obscure, long-neglected corner of the garden."
—
This CHope Story briefly summarizes my experience closely following our incumbent over the last almost three months. My most generous interpretation of his results concludes that his pseudo-administration has Fizzled. This, alone, seems justification for celebration!

Henri Matisse: Woman before an Aquarium (1921–23)
"Happy birthday to us, they cheered, ignoring the irrelevant incumbent."
—
This CHope Story finds me explaining what I have been coping with and hoping for as I have worked my way through this CHope Series, wading through constant streams of Slander&Libel.

Thomas Rowlandson: Libel Hunters on the Look Out, or Daily Examiners of the Liberty of the PressSeries/Book Title: Tegg's Caricatures Published by Thomas Tegg (April 12, 1810)
"I've been Coping by averting my gaze and Hoping for better …"
—
This CHope Story continues my reflections on this nearly finished series, this time considering sarcasm and its effects on author and intended target. It’s mostly LostOn everybody concerned.

Albert Sterner: Lost Angel (1932)
" … to keep myself company while I watched my potency and influence evaporate."
—
This CHope Story finds me describing TheAmericanDisease.

Frederic Edwin Church: Our Banner in the Sky (1861)
"We live with our thumbs on the scale."
—
This CHope Story, FollowingChapters, finds me spooling down after almost completing my thirty-second series of stories over the last eight years. I wondered if I was done proving to myself that I am a writer, and concluded that I might be, though I couldn't find justification to stop writing more series.

Sebald Beham: Prodigal Son Keeping his Swine (1538)
" … wherever they might lead."
—
The final week writing any series tastes bittersweet. The long-aspired-for objective moves within reach and I can begin to draw some conclusions. What began as confusion might not fully resolve, but it sheds some of its former mystery. I never attempt to create anything definitive. I’d much rather chronicle the time as it existed than create anything for anybody's ages, though I inexorably, eventually, do manage to produce something for somebody’s ages, probably mine. Whatever’s written becomes self-portraiture, sometimes as if viewed through a fun-house mirror. This time, I focused more deliberately upon approaching the finish line. What I’d begun as CHope became CHoping as the ending neared. After much dread, I gratefully acknowledged that much of what I’d feared to pass had Fizzled, though I should have emphasized that even epic fizzles can leave casualties. I marveled at how any administration could hope to succeed by committing serial Slander&Libel. Much of what I’d written in this series, I freely admitted, might forever be LostOn those whom I had imagined probably needed it most. Such is the usual fate of any attempt to do anything for the primary purpose of doing someone anything for their own good. (Cynicism alert!) I stepped out on a limb and voiced what I personally consider to be TheAmericanDisease, and ended the week and the series reflecting on what are popularly known as FollowingChapters. I committed to committing future series. Thank you for following along through thirty-two of them … and still counting.

©2025 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #CHope , #PureSchmaltz