Edward Alexander Wadsworth
The Open Window
(c. 1914)

"Prosperity always returns with renewed vengeance."

I lost my Prosperity the same way Milton described Adam and Eve losing their paradise, for neither event ultimately amounted to much of a loss. I could consider them each a trade, and perhaps, even a fair one. Eve ate of the apple of the Tree of Knowledge, a decidedly good decision if only because it assured that she’d never be a dumb broad (excuse the pejorative). Adam, when confronted with the choice between abandoning his true love to lonely exile or accompanying her, chose to take a bite of Eve’s apple and trade his physical paradise for a more mobile emotional one. True, both traded infinite goodness for the vagaries of finite existence, but they gained considerable plot momentum in the process. Imagine where literature might have matured from a world consumed by unending sameness. In retrospect, if not in prospect, their ParadiseLost was an infinite emotional gain: true love.

When The Muse and I entered exile, seventeen years ago this year, we similarly forfeited our own hard-won paradise.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Edward Alexander Wadsworth
Illustration (Typhoon)
(1914–1915)

"…the least of what every Prosperity demanded in return."

Prosperity requires a vast company of supporting characters. It’s neither an island nor an isthmus, but an integrated element within recursive layers of ecosystem, some of which we’d really rather not acknowledge. If living requires some level of complicity, Prosperity seems to demand an even greater involvement in operations no sane person would ever volunteer for. Such seems to be Prosperity’s price. It’s not just laziness that insists we compromise ourselves in these ways, or convenience, for much of what our grandfathers never needed to consider has become essential to maintaining the Prosperity we’ve grown more than merely accustomed to. Many of these compromises—if, indeed, they can still be properly considered compromises—arise from genuine improvements which always bring along some number of unwanted externalities. The Villa Vatta Schmaltz had no indoor plumbing or electricity when it was built in 1907. This must be why the bathrooms are anything but spacious and inconveniently located. The upstairs bathrooms began their lives as a sleeping porch.

Much of the ProsperityMachinery we so utterly depend upon stays comfortably invisible to our daily lives.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Guido Reni
Charity
(ca. 1630)

"… I might reasonably thrive on a few of my more reassuring misconceptions."

Now, after thirteen weeks spent considering Prosperity, I am realizing just how immature and generally juvenile my conception of the subject had been. I remain largely ignorant of it, since simple consideration rarely yields wisdom; more likely, dissatisfaction. Confessing my ignorance probably produced no more than negative knowledge, certain aversions as opposed to mature understandings. I might be little better for the effort, though I suspect I might possess a better appreciation of the depth of my former misunderstanding. It will likely be a life’s work to recover and construct much better than I’ve already grown too accustomed to. I don’t have all that much life left now.

At least I know that my Prosperity was never my possession.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Andrew Wyeth
Maine Fisherman
(1936)

"…grateful we can actually employ our old, reliable Walla Walla Way."

True Prosperity might be NonBinary, defying specific classification. It seems to be anything but all-or-nothing, eschewing either/ors in favor of some flavor of both/ands. It tends to smother under clever definitions, and might sometimes even be mistaken for degradation. Environmentalists often get sideways with Prosperity because they treat externalities as if they define an entire context. They seem to entrap themselves too easily in impossible imperatives, casting themselves as the only noble ones and defending traditions nobody else seems to fully appreciate. They perceive change as degradation and stasis as somehow possible in a world that’s necessarily either economically expanding or contracting. Those pursuing Prosperity must remain mindful, too, of the environmental stewardship every development demands, though they risk being cast as an adversary to apple pie when they suggest that perhaps a diet of both butter and guns might be necessary and not impossible or necessarily degrading.

Our controversies devolve into strict dichotomies these days.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Jan Toorop
Loss of Faith
(1894)

This week’s Prosperity dispatches arrived as the series entered its final approach. The writing ranged from the historical accounting in Legacy to the nonlinear economics in Cascades, from the paradox in Unsecurity to the epistemological honesty in PresumptiveProsperity, from the anthem in ScaryProsperity to the quiet triumph in Restoring. The Muse walked back into her garden. The pickup toodled out to the farm market. The mechanic wouldn’t take a nickel. In these final installments, the series found that Prosperity naturally expands beyond its originating boundaries—and that might be all it ever does.

Thank you for following along!

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Paris
(ca. 1518–1524)

"Restoring Prosperity properly refocuses its inherent potential."

“Please return your tray tables to their full upright position.” This common command stands here as the simplest example of Restoring. What was undone might be redone. What seemed irrevocably lost might be capable of Restoring, if not itself, then, perhaps, a successor or substitute. ProsperityLost might serve as the first move in a cyclical pattern of Restoring Prosperity again. I will pine after an exact replica of whatever I lost, even though Restoring that might well shortchange me. I rarely imagine replacing it with something better than whatever I lost. This amounts to an aspirational affliction, perhaps due to a faulty imagination, or maybe I simply imprinted on that ProsperityLost so the loss became my Prosperity, at least temporarily; plenty of nothing beats nothing left at all.

Six weeks and change after The Muse broke both ankles, her osteopath released her from wearing the boots that stabilized the broken bones.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Unknown Mexica (Aztec) Artist Cihuateotl (15th–early 16th century)

We stand on the precipice of the greatest discoveries in the history of this world so far. How could it possibly be otherwise, as we stand here with all of human history receding behind us? This might be why every day seems so imperiled right now. With the promise of even modest Prosperity, externalities seem to become more prominent. We see mostly downsides and forget how fraught every prior radical improvement initially seemed. There were always naysayers; they often even dominated whatever discussions surrounded the emerging opportunity. Remember, most Americans were Tories during the Revolution. If people had been able to access their druthers, they would have probably passed up every opportunity to rewrite history, preferring to stay home, however uncomfortable, over dangerous exploring and potentially discovering great good fortune. Prosperity in the past has often come into its futures kicking and screaming bloody murder.

How embarrassing when the future dawns brighter than anyone ever imagined it could be again.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Torii Kiyomasu II
Sanjō Kantarō as a Woman Arranging Her Hair Before a Lacquer Mirror
(before 1763)

"…Prosperity stands in good company because of this."

I have a physicist friend who seems to hold vast amounts of arcane knowledge. He can pull full-blown proofs out of seemingly non-existent air. He often corrects my misconceptions, and I never fail to find fault with myself then for not having accumulated what he considers casual knowledge, but then we held different foci both in our choice of professions and in our personal lives. It was a wonder we ever encountered each other, given how different our worlds seem. We have each retained our grounding orientation, though we agree on more than either of us probably had any right to anticipate. We are vastly different and also quite disarmingly similar. As a result, we are quite compatible.

I remember the first time I encountered the kind of knowledge the world might expect me to retain.

Tags: #PureSchmaltz, #Prosperity

Joachim Patinir
The Penitence of Saint Jerome
(ca. 1515)

"… and they usually cost much more than Prosperity ever bargains for."

Our Prosperity was never really secure. Its security was usually merely presumed, for there could never have been an adequate defense against its many enemies, and it always had its enemies, many of them. It survived, while it survived, as a matter of apparent grace, without coherent explanation. It came, but was always capable of leaving or, more likely perhaps, of being snatched away for no apparent reason. There were always those who insisted upon assaulting any decency, as if their special gift was the superpower to sour others’ experience. They were always trouble, and everyone knew they were or would be real trouble before their story ended. They were often just jealous, envious of others’ apparently better circumstances, angry at themselves for where they landed, but also at least equally angry at others for prospering. It never made sense to assault themselves, though they were capable of severely wounding themselves and would wound themselves on occasion, but continuous self-destruction makes little sense, even to almost complete idiots. Regardless of the defense erected against such forces, Prosperity would often lose, especially on the first round or two, though it would always retain an ability to recover and renew. It mostly made no sense to maintain a robust defense, since it could eventually renew and recover infinitely as it wished. Prosperity was always persistent.

A piece of Prosperity’s perversion insisted that we needed to maintain a more active defense.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Formerly attributed to Xu Daoning (ca. 1000-after 1066)
Autumn river in the rain and clouds
(16th century- China)

"We seem at least obligated to deal with this world as it is,…"

Economics works in mysterious ways, and doesn’t always seem to work at all. Prosperities can rise and fall with startling speed, partly because they do not move linearly. Both Prosperity and penury can fool the eye that expects straight-line predictability. Both require systems thinking even to begin to comprehend, and even then they might still seem mysterious. Ruinous change can seem to occur faster than instantly, especially for those who can’t register nonlinear variation. Beneficial shifts can occur just as seemingly erratically, probably because both Prosperity and Penury tend to operate as Cascades. Their values do not travel via thin, straight wires, but through wilder splashes, as if they were water racing through a rocky ravine. So much apparently random variation litters their courses that accurate prediction seems unlikely, if not impossible. This might be why they both just seem to happen.

Accounting for both Prosperity and penury might be best attempted after the fact, once a period of insulating time has passed.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Yashima Gakutei
Prosperity: Ding Gu (Roku, Teiko),
from an untitled series of happiness, prosperity, and longevity
(c. 1824)

"This will be the work by which future generations will judge patriots."

With fewer than ten installments of this Prosperity series remaining, I start foreshadowing the ending here. I must have explained the process by which I intended to consider Prosperity in this series, a method I might label Dialogic. Rather than start with the ending in mind, I began with questions, honestly intending to inquire, then inquire again, following the story however it seemed to unfold. This tactic might explain the winding pathway this series must have seemed to have been taking. I began each writing session a little bit baffled about where the unfolding story might lead me next, for in this type of analysis, the subject guides the writer rather than the writer crafting the plot. The plot emerges, and the writer trusts that it must. This writer chose, day to day, so only in that way did I influence the resulting flow. The storyline has emerged from the process rather than the process or the author guiding it, so I have not employed foreboding until now, and not only because I couldn’t have known enough about where the Dialogic method would lead me, but also because foreboding couldn’t have served any possible purpose if my purpose was genuine discovery. But we both know an end seems near now, and we both wonder where this expose might be going.

It has been demonstrating its Legacy with every installment.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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!

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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

"Who knows where this game of Prosperity goes next?"

My sense of Prosperity seems to depend upon two critical, if rarely deliberately acknowledged, resources: innocence and ignorance, in some proportionate mix: Innogrance. Some of my sense of Prosperity certainly stems from what I do not presently know or even suspect, an innocence. It just never occurred to me to consider that stuff. The rest of my sense of Prosperity might reasonably stem from my ignorance. Had I known how to create the Prosperity I presently enjoy, I doubt that I would have managed to produce anything close to what I have experienced. Prosperity seems to be one of those states that require some blind backing into rather than clever forward strategy. Sure, strategy, however clever, might well contribute its share, but Innogrance seems responsible for producing the balance.

This balance seems just as delicate as you might suspect.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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)

"I tolerate working harder for it than it ever seems to work for me."

Prosperity seems to exist in two distinct forms: Slippery and sticky. Sticky seems to be the more noun-like of the Prosperities. These might serve as outward manifestations of Prosperity possessed, though they can be misleading, as appearances are not always what they seem. Many of the Prosperities seem slipperier, either because they have no physical presence or because their presence simply seems far less apparent than their sticky counterparts. The art we display on our walls, and the books we so proudly exhibit on our shelves, serve as prominent examples of our sticky Prosperity. Indeed, our very home, The VillaVattaSchmaltz, represents probably the stickiest Prosperity we possess, though, yes, it sometimes seems as if The Villa possesses us more than we possess it. Either way, its presence seems inescapably sticky.

Much of The Muse and my Prosperity was never reducible to mere possessions, however grand those might appear, for our underlying Prosperity seems decidedly less sticky than art, books, or address.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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

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

Prosperity spawns predators and pretenders. As medical insurance became more available, so-called “medical cards” emerged to serve those still frozen out of insurance markets, especially for prescriptions and dental services, which are often the most difficult kinds of insurance to afford. To this day, Medicare offers nothing to cover dental expenses, which often peak after one retires. Prescription drug plans have also become notorious for becoming worthless just at the time someone might actually need to rely on them. So, a ready market always awaits some latest scam. Our conservative friends and enemies have been most active in this shadow market, pushing plans that appear to supplement missing elements of seniors’ coverage, but which tend to promise more lavishly than they ever deliver. In recent years, states, which regulate insurance markets, have begun demanding that these alternatives to insurance coverage be clearly labeled, “This Is NotInsurance,” though these warnings make little difference to those without viable alternatives.

Make no mistake, this is not an insurance company problem, but a public policy one.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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

"…inevitable complications always present when CreatingWorlds."

The kitchen smells yeasty, like bread dough with a distinctive fruity backdrop. The scent hovers below overwhelming, still subtle but inescapable, reminiscent of the underlying fruit, but distinctly different. 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, or simply consumed it fresh; we saw only its very narrowest representation. After picking it this year, I pitted the fruit and set it out to slowly and quite deliberately rot, rendering its sweetness into alcohol and thereby Creating Worlds that didn’t exist before. This ritual might be as old as civilization, for Mirabelle plums have probably always produced exponentially more fruit than anybody could consume fresh. Ruled by the inexorable laws of Late Summer, the fruit’s natural yeasts and sweetness would set it to festering without any human intervention. Over millennia, a process of sorts has emerged that we can use to do what nature, left to her own devices, could have accomplished unassisted.

I suppose that just these sorts of activities once regulated the civilized world.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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

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


Prosperity seems to come and go on something akin to Sandberg’s little cat feet, though everyone who ever owned a cat, little or otherwise, knows just how loud their arrivals and departures can sound. Our cats, Max and Molly, hit the floor with a distinct plop so far from stealthy that nobody can smell stealthy from there. They proceed to march down the upstairs hall, for they most often come and go via a second-story window they access by climbing up the back trellis and storming up the kitchen roof. I hear each footfall as they “creep” down the stairs, and can audibly follow their progress through the front hall and the dining room, even though both rooms’ floors are covered with shock-absorbing vinyl planking, before taking their final launch up and onto the kitchen table, where they hope I’ve left them some kitty treats. I usually have. These cats have learned that their Prosperity reliably exists on the kitchen table, and they are not the least bit shy about directly pursuing it there.

My Prosperities do not seem to come so reliably or noisily.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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!

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

Utagawa Hiroshige II (Shigenobu)
Paulownia Trees at Akasaka in the Evening Rain
(1859)

"I revel in my AutumnRains' reappearance."

Moisture well represents our Prosperity here in this desert steppeland, now trying to pass for Middle American town and pasture. It is beautiful here in springtime when this valley could pass for Ireland, after the Winter and Spring wheat conspire with the Canola to turn the late summer beige stubblefields into a checkerboard of Prosperity after the Winter rains, fogs, and snows have left our soils saturated. This country fasts through its Summers, often seeing no more than passing hints of its Prosperity through June, July, and August. It always feels dicey, as if we might not make it through to the AutumnRains each year. My friend Randal reports that he measured the driest August in at least the prior ten years, with only +.07 inches of SummerRain registered against -4.94 inches of evaporation. Through summers, we typically lose more moisture than we gain, straining our conviction that we didn’t really choose to live on the edge of a freaking desert. I keep my yard Middle American New England emerald, just the way God never once intended.

The AutumnRains return— if not precisely reliably, then inevitably—and they arrive like Prosperity returning from another harrowing Hero’s Journey.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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)

"…neither liquid nor solid, but mist."

A surprising period of Thawing typically follows one of my frozen-in-the-headlights-without-the-benefit-of-headlights experiences. Whatever had so effectively inhibited me from engaging dissipates. Not all at once, and never quite completely, but a few openings appear out of what had previously seemed like blinding, inhibiting, frozen mist. I climbed the ladder. I harvested the fruit I’d feared I’d left to rot. My world seemed to right itself, or at least start moving in that general direction. Moving! I accomplished something! I once again sense that I possess actual latitude for action. I feel capable of choosing, at least on a limited basis. I can choose, then I can choose again, and I recognize the fundamental cycling that underpins my Prosperity; for what was Prosperity if not the sense that I might choose more or less freely, that I was less imprisoned in my world than I was an intermittent master of it?

I first sense a loss of Prosperity as a limiting of choices.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz

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)

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

I heard myself proclaiming that I have been doing that fabled deer-in-the-headlights reaction one better, for I’ve been frozen as if caught in headlights on a dark forest road WithoutHeadlights present. I suspect that this reaction might not be classified as a talent, though I also imagine that it might, like deer’s reaction to bright lights, offer some evolutionary benefit, or used to offer one, before cars made such interactions dangerously commonplace. I can’t tell which of my native responses to such perturbations are positive ones and which might be more dangerous, though I carry opinions. I usually feel guilty when I notice that I’m frozen WithoutHeadlights again, as this must be a snowflake’s response signifying something shameful. I imagine myself more powerful, and capable of shrugging off most threats, though in real life, my vulnerabilities continually surprise me. I occasionally qualify as a superhero, but fleetingly, and only ever in my own mind.

This passing summer has been a struggle for me.

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz