Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu)
View of Iris Gardens at Horikiri
(1861)

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived in the shadow of ExistentialDread and emerged into AutumnRains. The writing ranged from the clinical precision of CTSD to the paralyzing honesty of ExistentialDread, from the epic sermon of ReClaiming to the procrastinating wisdom of WithoutHeadlights, from the philosophical revelation of Thawing to the portrait of Prosperity as AutumnRains. The AutumnRains arrived. The Mirabelle wine processing began. The Muse showered and then slept in her own bed for the first time in six weeks. The series found, at last, that Prosperity might be a more or less continuous Thawing — neither liquid nor solid, but mist.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

CTSD
“I dare not wait until this insult ends to start taking better care of myself.”

This Prosperity Story coins the term CTSD — Concomitant Traumatic Stress Disorder — for the disorder that develops while the trauma is still ongoing, and argues that the Constitution itself was expressly established to defend against enemies of Prosperity.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how the onset of Traumatic Stress Disorders does not necessarily wait until a trauma passes. The overly popular Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder was very likely first experienced in its Concomitant form, while the trauma was still present. Our Constitution’s Preamble — a more perfect Union, Justice, domestic Tranquility, common defense, general welfare, and the blessings of liberty — constitutes the most complete definition of Prosperity anyone could ask for. Our incumbent’s every action has insulted Prosperity and, as such, assaulted our Constitution. His shenanigans have visited trauma upon every Prosperity-loving citizen, and this trauma has been ongoing for longer than a year and a half, offering no promise of relenting. The first stage of dealing with Trauma, Concomitant or Past, simply must be acknowledging its presence. I dare not wait until this insult ends to start taking better care of myself.

Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu): Image of a Whale Hunt at Goto, Hizen Province (Hizen Goto geiryo no zu), from the series “One Hundred Famous Views in the Various Provinces (Shokoku meisho hyakkei)” (1859)

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ExistentialDread
“…will this just become another excuse in the already overlong list of reasons why I can’t have the Prosperity I once believed I deserved?”

This Prosperity Story names the ExistentialDread that descends when Prosperity feels threatened — and discovers that the MAGA art has always depended on invoking exactly this debilitating response from the Prosperous majority.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how one sure sign that Prosperity feels threatened comes when a persistent ExistentialDread descends. Intermittent dread offers some benefit — it can sharpen focus and reawaken urgency, reminding one that they’re more isthmus than island. But when the Dread turns Existential and moves in claiming a long-term lease, its few benefits quickly evaporate. In OrdinaryTimes, Prosperity successfully serves as the barricade between my life and ExistentialDread. The shadow of ExistentialDread can transform anything into awful. I curl up in the fetal position and whimper as if whimpering were my sole remaining superpower. The significant part of the MAGA art has always involved invoking just this debilitating response from the Prosperous. Will naming the invader ExistentialDread make any difference in my response, or will this just become another excuse in the already overlong list of reasons why I can’t have the Prosperity I once believed I deserved?

Hiroshige II (二代目 歌川広重, Ni-daime Utagawa Hiroshige: Catching Lampreys, Eels, and Red Rockfish on Lake Suwa, Shinshu Province, from the series “One Hundred Famous Views in the Various Provinces (Shokoku meisho hyakkei)” (1860)

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ReClaiming
“What begins as slander always eventually ends as ashes, once the epic heroes show up to ReClaim their birthright.”

This Prosperity Story arrives as an epic sermon — tracing the enemies of Prosperity through the Gilded Age from Cromwell and Milton, through Roosevelt and Robert Taft, into the Charismatic Christian Nationalists, to the present insurrection — and calls upon We, The People, to ReClaim what’s ours.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how we live in a time that might have been specifically designed to spawn one of those immemorial epic poems — ProsperityLost, written by someone hopefully far more secular than Milton and less reckless than the probably apocryphal Homer. The enemies of Prosperity seemed incapable of dreaming, big or otherwise. They were interested in sure things and certainties, both avowed enemies of the faith Prosperity utterly relies upon. They conscripted the Charismatic Christian sects, which had about as much in common with the Main Street Presbyterian and Baptist folks we imprinted on as representing religion as the Main Street crowd had with those who actively practiced perversion. Our job has always been to ReClaim the Prosperity the latest iteration of Sons of Bitches tries to steal from us. What begins as slander always eventually ends in ashes, once the epic heroes show up to ReClaim their birthright. Now must surely be that time!

Hiroshige II (二代目 歌川広重, Ni-daime Utagawa Hiroshige: Chōmeiji Temple (Chōmeiji), from the series Miracles of Kannon (1859)

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WithoutHeadlights
“…teetering on the edge of some tragic change in fortune if I cannot get this tendency under better control.”

This Prosperity Story examines the frozen-in-headlights-without-the-benefit-of-headlights response — and discovers, through two weeks of Mirabelle plum harvest procrastination, that delay sometimes ripens fruit better than any expectation could insist.

In this Prosperity Story, I heard myself proclaiming that I have been doing the fabled deer-in-the-headlights reaction one better, frozen as if caught in headlights on a dark forest road WithoutHeadlights present. This passing summer has been a struggle. My vulnerability seemed amplified by the sure and certain threat of my looming seventy-fifth birthday; then, The Muse fell, breaking both ankles, and the Prosperity Series kept emerging in the background, deepening my understanding of the larceny perpetrated on me and our beloved country. I overwhelmed myself. Yet the two-week procrastination before harvesting the second Mirabelle tree resulted in the finest imaginable harvest. The fruit had assumed its signature translucent yellow and its infamous honey flavor. The delay had also finally allowed The Muse and me to study up on the winemaking process. I might be unusually fortunate so far, and I am now teetering on the edge of some tragic change in fortune if I cannot get this tendency to freeze WithoutHeadlights under better control.

Utagawa Hiroshige[a] (歌川 広重) or Andō Hiroshige[b] (安藤 広重): Kanbara: Evening Snow (Kanbara, yoru no yuki), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido (c. 1833/34)

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Thawing
“…neither liquid nor solid, but mist.”

This Prosperity Story discovers that Prosperity might be a more or less continuous Thawing — freezing up before regaining temporarily suspended possibilities — and finds the evidence in a ladder climbed, a harvest completed, and the first batch of Mirabelle wine begun.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how a surprising period of Thawing typically follows one of my frozen-in-the-headlights-without-the-benefit-of-headlights experiences. I first sense a loss of Prosperity as a limiting of choices. A gain of Prosperity feels inherently reassuring — latitude for action enters the equation, and a sense of self-determination results. Prosperity might simply be a measure of some sense of possibility. I remain prosperous just as long as I sense the authority to realize possibilities. Losing that sense produces penury. Once I climbed that ladder and started picking that long-neglected fruit, I could feel an opening appearing. Together, The Muse and I might manage to ferment our way into a fresh Prosperity — if not necessarily to replace our ProsperityLost, but to create some renewing replacement sense of PossibilityFound. Prosperity might, then, be a more or less continuous Thawing, freezing up before regaining temporarily suspended possibilities, neither liquid nor solid, but mist.
Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Mishima: Morning Mist (Mishima, asagiri), from the series “Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido Road (Tokaido gojusan tsugi no uchi),” also known as the Hoeido Tokaido (c. 1833/34)

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AutumnRains
“I revel in my AutumnRains’ reappearance.”

This Prosperity Story paints a portrait of Prosperity returning — AutumnRains ticking on the back deck, twenty-five pounds of Mirabelle plums pitted and readied for fermentation, The Muse supervising the chemical measurements, the sprinkler system disabled for the first time since Spring.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how moisture well represents our Prosperity here in this desert steppeland. My friend Randal measured the driest August in at least ten years, with only +.07 inches of SummerRain registered against -4.94 inches of evaporation. The AutumnRains return, if not precisely reliably, then inevitably, and they arrive like Prosperity returning from another harrowing Hero’s Journey. The Hero returns a stranger, and Prosperity might just as well return mute. The moisture softens my initial reactions. I listen to the unfamiliar patter of a genuine drizzle on the roof instead of the deadening box fan fruitlessly shoving around dead air. I awaken reassured. I readied twenty-five pounds of Mirabelle plums and felt Prosperous when thoroughly embedded within the preparation process, AutumnRains ticking on the back deck through the wide-open sliders. I disabled the automatic sprinkler system for the first time since we installed it last Spring. I revel in my AutumnRains’ reappearance.

Sano di Pietro or Ansano di Pietro di Mencio Saint Anthony the Abbot in the Wilderness(ca. 1440)

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Through Whatever Installments Remain

A question for my Third Party Perspective Editor: How did this week’s writing promote the Prosperity Series, and what seemed new and/or different?

This week, the series completed an arc that began in CTSD and resolved in AutumnRains — a full emotional and philosophical journey from clinical diagnosis through existential confession, epic fury, procrastinating wisdom, philosophical revelation, and final defining portrait. Six installments that belong together as surely as any sequence in any series.

CTSD and ExistentialDread formed the week’s diagnostic pair — naming what the summer had been doing to the author and to the series itself. The courage of ExistentialDread in particular — confessing the frozen lawn, the cardboard suppers, the gardens untended, the petunias never planted — was the week’s most personally necessary writing. Without that confession, nothing that followed could have landed.

ReClaiming was a genuinely new register — the series has never before produced a spontaneous sermon, and the distinction matters. The historical sweep from the Gilded Age, from Milton and Cromwell through Roosevelt through Christian Nationalism arrived not as research but as release. Nine years of daily practice producing something the author didn’t know he knew. That’s the practice at its deepest.

WithoutHeadlights and Thawing worked as the week’s philosophical pair — the freeze and its resolution, procrastination revealing itself as preparation, the Mirabelle harvest becoming the mechanism by which the larger freezing broke. The series has rarely managed to make the domestic and the philosophical so inseparable. The ladder climbed, and the twenty-five pounds of fruit readied carried more philosophical weight than any abstract argument could.

AutumnRains was the week’s essential achievement — the series discovering that it had been painting a portrait of Prosperity rather than arguing about it. The .07 inches of SummerRain against -4.94 inches of evaporation, the plum pitter clanking in reassuring rhythms, The Muse supervising the chemical measurements, the sprinkler disabled for the first time since Spring — these aren’t illustrations. They are the thing itself.

What was different this week: the series found its portrait register. After seventy-five installments of argument, philosophy, confession, and fury, AutumnRains demonstrated that Prosperity can be painted rather than proved. That capacity will carry the series through whatever installments remain.

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Thank you for following along!

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You can order Cluelessness from Bookshop.org, Powell’s Books, or Amazon. Digital ISBN: 9781977292575 — Paperback ISBN: 9781977279651 It's now more widely available, just as the publisher predicted. There's this Kindle link. Link To Publisher's Website Here

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz