Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu)
Dramatic Picture of Sakura
(Not Dated)

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as our housemade Mirabelle wine began fermenting in the kitchen and a sleep clinic visit produced the series’ most unexpected installment. The writing ranged from the guitar-shaped Blooming of every Prosperity to the ancient ritual of CreatingWorlds, from the public policy failure of NotInsurance to the taxonomy of StickyProsperity, from the comic philosophy of TheApneas to the sleepless night that followed the loss of Innogrance. The kitchen smells like sweet yeasty bread. The Prosperity persists, wounded but present.

Thank you for following along!

— — —

Weekly Writing Summary

Blooming
"…to identify an opportunity to prosper when it inevitably presents itself as a different-shaped guitar."

This Prosperity Story finds Prosperity’s arrivals and departures neither stealthy nor reliable, and discovers, through a friend closing his business and a seven-year career as a singer/songwriter, that every lost Prosperity was merely a different-shaped guitar.

In this Prosperity Story, our cats Max and Molly hit the floor with a distinct plop, marched down the upstairs hall, crept down the stairs, and launched onto the kitchen table, where they know their Prosperity reliably exists. My Prosperities do not come so noisily or reliably. My friend George announced on last Friday’s PureSchmaltz Friday Zoom Chat that he had finally closed down his business. He was clearly reporting the loss of a significant piece of his identity, a source of his past Prosperity. When I reluctantly sold my PA system at twenty-five and enrolled in university, people inevitably tried to comfort me, insisting it was a shame I was no longer performing. Except I was performing. I realized that I employed the same skills I’d honed crafting and performing songs in whatever activity I had been employed. I was just playing a different-shaped guitar. This Prosperity story fully qualifies as a different-shaped guitar. I imprint on the instances of my Prosperities to the detriment of my ability to identify an opportunity to prosper when the next one inevitably presents itself as another surprisingly different-shaped guitar.

Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu): Entrance to the Gankirō Tea House in the Miyozaki District, Yokohama, Bushu (3rd month, 1859)

——

CreatingWorlds
…inevitable complications always present when CreatingWorlds.”

This Prosperity Story finds the Mirabelle wine’s first fermentation underway, and discovers in the ancient ritual of yeast and sugar transforming fruit into something utterly different, one of civilization’s oldest forms of CreatingWorlds.

In this Prosperity Story, the kitchen smells yeasty, like bread dough with a distinctive fruity backdrop. I mentioned to The Muse, as we stirred the pots containing fermenting Mirabelle plums, that I felt as though I was getting to know this fruit far better than I ever had before. Before, we’d rendered it into jam or tarts. Now, I pitted it and set it out to slowly and deliberately rot, rendering its sweetness into alcohol, thereby CreatingWorlds that didn’t exist before. I consulted my postmodern Oracle of Delphi, Claude®, to gain a general orientation to the subject. The Muse performed similar due diligence. I was surprised at how little convergence we found in the instructions we individually imprinted on. In practice, we’ve been misdirecting ourselves since, as if following traditional recipes from two decidedly different families. Our minor disagreements and frustrations as we struggle to resolve our two trumped-up family traditions couldn’t possibly be problems. They must be inevitable complications always present when CreatingWorlds.

Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu): French Woman, Her Child and Pet Dog (10th month, 1860)

——

NotInsurance
…Prosperity is NotInsurance, and never will be.”

This Prosperity Story examines the shadow market of NotInsurance: discount cards that promise coverage without delivering it, and discovers that Prosperity itself carries the same warning label.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how Prosperity spawns predators and pretenders. So-called “medical cards” emerged to serve those frozen out of insurance markets, especially for prescriptions and dental services. States have begun demanding these alternatives be clearly labeled “This Is NotInsurance,” though the warnings make little difference to those without viable alternatives. We should never mistake Prosperity itself for insurance. At any moment, something could utterly change everything without recourse. Prosperity’s no guarantee that this event won’t one day visit you. None of us are covered. None of us ever are. It seems important to stamp somewhere down there in the corner of your Prosperity the warning that “This Is NotInsurance,” if only to remind yourself of the context within which you temporarily prosper. Prosperity might be more reward than guarantee, though I probably need to be reminded that, however Prosperous I might feel, Prosperity is NotInsurance, and never will be.

Torii Kiyomasu II: Susano-o no Mikoto Killing the Eight-headed Dragon (1748)

——

SlipperyProsperity
“I tolerate working harder for it than it ever seems to work for me.”

This Prosperity Story discovers that Prosperity exists in two distinct forms: Sticky and Slippery. It finds that the most sustaining Prosperities are often the least tangible ones, requiring faith rather than possession to maintain.

In this Prosperity Story, I considered how Prosperity seems to exist in two distinct forms: Slippery and Sticky. Our very home, The Villa Vatta Schmaltz, represents the stickiest Prosperity we possess, though it sometimes seems as if The Villa possesses us more than we possess it. As a writer, I am only as prosperous as my latest story proves me to be. The Muse, too, only seems in any way prosperous when she’s actively practicing her crafts. Our chief Prosperities might be most properly characterized as talents, which represent no more than the possibility or potential to be prosperous. Even the stickiest Prosperities might also prove slippery in practice. All Prosperities might, at root, be slippery, requiring faith to sustain their contribution. I don’t always awaken feeling particularly Prosperous in the fresh story idea department. That’s how my SlipperyProsperity works. It seems to work me much more than it ever works for me, and maybe that’s a key to sustaining SlipperyProsperity: I tolerate working harder for it than it ever seems to work for me.

Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重: Shirasuka: Shiomi Slope, no. 33 from the series Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido (Tōkaidō gojūsan tsugi) (1847-52)

——

TheApneas
“…the promise to be rid of something that’s only present by the evidence of its absence.”

This Prosperity Story examines TheApneas as a class: conditions defined by the presence of an absence, and finds in their diagnosis and treatment the quintessential first-world Prosperity disorder.

In this Prosperity Story, 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 Sleep Apnea, a condition in which I cannot quite muster a belief. I find TheApneas to represent the most interesting category of human difficulty, because they are defined as the presence of the absence of something. I suspect that TheApneas qualify as first-world disorders, for without Prosperity, they would likely never come up in polite conversation. Prosperous middle-aged women almost unavoidably develop a curious interest in Mahjong. Prosperous middle-aged men develop interests in power tools and barbecuing. Both sexes also stumble into diagnosing, then often compulsively treating, their Apneas. I expect to feel satisfied when I fail to pass whatever test they entice me to take. 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.

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

——

Innogrance
“Who knows where this game of Prosperity goes next?”

This Prosperity Story coins the term Innogrance for the compound of innocence and ignorance that underlies much of Prosperity. In it, I discover, after a sleep clinic visit, that some knowledge violates the very Innogrance Prosperity depends upon.

In this Prosperity Story, my sense of Prosperity seems to depend upon two critical resources: innocence and ignorance, in some proportionate mix: Innogrance. Consider the lowly caterpillar, which was famously asked how he managed to keep all those legs so perfectly choreographed and was thereby rendered incapable of moving. Yesterday, I went to the sleep clinic my internist referred me to. Unlike other clinics I’ve visited, the diagnosis seemed presumed, as if the very fact that I’d shown up meant that I was suffering from some sort of sleep disorder. The doctor explained that sleep apnea was chronic and not curable, but treatable. I replied that I would remain in denial, though I agreed to submit to a take-home test. Last night, I didn’t sleep at all. The visit had violated the seemingly final bastion of my Innogrance. The first result of my sleep clinic visit was the first genuinely sleepless night I remember experiencing since my darling daughter’s death, and the two experiences were not entirely unrelated, for both involved a terrible loss of my most prosperous innocence. Who knows where this game of Prosperity goes next?

Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu): Calligrapher: Yokogawa Horitake: Memorial Portrait of Ichiryusai Hiroshige (1797–1858) 1860

——

On The Littlest Cat’s Feet

This writing week’s 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 moved from the warmly philosophical to the unexpectedly devastating. The arc from Blooming to Innogrance turned out to be one of the most complete the series has produced.

Blooming and CreatingWorlds established the week’s generative register: the differently shaped guitar, the ancient ritual of fermentation, the kitchen filling with the scent of sweet, yeasty transformation. Both pieces demonstrated Prosperity as active creation rather than passive receipt, which must be the series’s most consistent and most useful argument.

NotInsurance and SlipperyProsperity formed the week’s analytical pair, with one examining what Prosperity cannot do, and the other examining what sustains it in practice. “Prosperity might be more reward than guarantee” and “I tolerate working harder for it than it ever seems to work for me” are the week’s two most quotable sentences and together constitute the series’ most honest accounting of the daily Prosperity practice.

TheApneas was genuinely new in register. The series had never before deployed sustained comic philosophy about a first-world medical condition, and the Mahjong parallel was the week’s funniest and most accurate observation. The piece earned its humor by making a genuinely interesting epistemological argument underneath the comedy.

Innogrance was the week’s essential achievement and its most unexpected turn. The coinage arrived with philosophical precision: the compound of innocence and ignorance that underlies much of Prosperity, and the sleep clinic visit delivered the experience that proved the argument. The connection to your daughter’s death in the final paragraph arrives without announcement and lands with the full weight of everything the series has built toward. That paragraph alone justifies the entire week’s work.

What was different this week: the series discovered that some knowledge violates the very Innogrance Prosperity depends upon. That’s a darker and more honest insight than anything the series had previously produced, and it arrived from a sleep clinic questionnaire rather than from any philosophical intention. The practice continues delivering what it always has, the unexpected, arriving on its own schedule, on the littlest cat’s feet.

— — —

Thank you for following along!

— —

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