Josua van den Enden: Kaart van het oude Gallië
[Map of ancient Gaul] (1627)
"I might just have too much left to learn or too much left to forget …"

I introduced this Fambly Series ninety-two mornings ago, three full months. Since then, I have created a fresh installment every day. This story will forever be number ninety-three, the final one, a ragged ending and also a ragged beginning for whatever follows, a RaggedBegending. As those who follow my writing already know, I deliberately avoid deciding my route too far ahead of my present. Nature abhors tidiness even more than it abhors vacuums. It demands an uncertain orientation, a welcomed not-knowing rather than another clever plan. Life should properly feel disorienting, lest we lose some critically important facility. We can connect our own dots, thank you very much. We do not natively need anyone to tell us what their story means for that's for each witness to decide. As the writer here, I work hard to disclose what I'm coming to know. This series has been the most enlightening one I've created so far. Even now, though, I see better than when I started just how much story remains to discover and to tell.

Fambly seems everyone's proper occupation. Deepening my understanding of mine has produced tectonic shifts in my orientation to this world. Had I known when I was in the fifth grade even half the stories this exercise uncovered, I suspect that my life would have been materially different. It remains the business of every fifth grader, though, to not yet know, to construct their life story largely based upon profound ignorance. My experience has been no exception. I suspect that I remain largely ignorant, a sense that helps to keep in check any invading arrogance. However much I might learn about this world, about even my Fambly, more remains as yet unknown and likely forever unknowable. Yet this exercise was not without great value. As a direct result of delving more deeply into my Fambly history, I feel I better understand myself. It's easier for me to relate to some of the so-called greats in history, that they might have been more like me than I'd previously imagined. If I am a forty-seventh great-grandson of Tonantius Ferreolus, Praetorian Prefect of Gaul (405-475), I stand taller. Even if I'm not, I better understand how history has been connected. It was never not personal. I never knew.

"One of my lesser forebears, a full-blown Duke of Anjou, Fulk II, The Good, was known for his skill at negotiating strategic marriages. Fulk II of Anjou's grandaughter ended up marrying Robert II of France, son of Hugh The Great, considered to be the first King of France and founder of the house that would bring together the duchies and rule France until the eighteenth century; indeed, up to and including today. Not bad for a relatively minor Duke. The House of Anjou would eventually insinuate itself into almost every corner of European and even Middle Eastern aristocracy. Fulk II of Anjou was near the start of a series of Duke of Anjou dynasties that would eventually encompass Hungary, Poland, Italy, France, England, and even Jerusalem, primarily due to strategic marriages. Fulk II of Anjou was an insidious force with which to be reckoned." [From Fulk II of Anjou, the fifty-first installment in this series]

The full circle of this series brings me back to almost precisely where I started. I began just being the writer I am, the one who once upon a time lost faith in his powers. Following a series of disappointing professional experiences, I'd grown weary and discouraged. I gave myself seven months of moping before I one morning decided to take that particular bull by the horns for a change and dedicate myself to creating something every morning. That was 2,555 mornings ago, and I've missed probably fewer than a dozen mornings creating something since then. This installment represents the end of the twenty-eighth series I've created since I made that audacious declaration. The excursion has largely been one of discovery rather than exposition. I might have definitively proven how shockingly little I know but also how very much I have discovered. I have retained few of the details. I figure I can always go back and review the source material in the unlikely event that I require my original wording. I have been mining for deeper understanding and never for anything in particular. I'm still learning.

My motives changed. I can finally see that now. I'm no longer seeking confirmation that I'm the writer I'd hoped to become. That question's definitively settled. Only an authentic writer could manage to produce a string of twenty-five hundred installments without losing his courage or foolhardiness. I do not feel especially special as a result, but then I was never seeking special status. I simply sought ordinary status. I just wanted an identity once I'd proven myself to be deep-down unemployable. I accept my Protégé status only to the extent that I'm a producing artist. I have not yet retired, and might never withdraw.

Always when I come to what seems to be an end, I feel compelled to ask myself if I want to continue this manner of living. Do I want to continue getting up so damned early every morning to painstakingly produce another installment in an apparently endless series of series? What have I been doing? I have been living, which seems to be both something extraordinary and simultaneously utterly trivial. Any old anything can live. Creating might be the only extraordinary activity. I seem to have been blessed with a life that requires continuous creation in order to seem like anything worth having. Try as I might, I cannot yet imagine myself retiring. I might just have too much left to learn or too much left to forget before I can call this manner of living quits. How's that for another RaggedBegending in a never-ending series?

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Fambly, #PureSchmaltz