Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
The Garden of the Hesperides
(Circa 1880)

"Amen, again, with real damned purpose this time!"

EndDays time seems short, as if a clock was winding down or the universe itself was wearing itself out. When did improvisation replace careful, studied preparation, and most things start happening haphazardly, as if everyone had conspired to just start making up shit as they went along? Seemingly gone are the more careful crafts, replaced with the more relatively careless ones. Reflection, too, might have been overwhelmed by a plethora of knee-jerk reactions. Yes, EndDays seem simply reactive rather than reflective, as if thinking, considering beforehand, had become crimes committed by the cowardly. Goaded on by our chief executive as an extremely public and seemingly ever-present example, we often reject planning as something belonging to an alien culture, as if we were smarter because we didn’t feel compelled to peek ahead. EndDays collapses the long term within which we’re all said to be dead into a presence composed of some combination of unwarranted certainty and dread. In this short term, we live as if we were essentially undead.

I recognize this difference because this week I’ve had an actual future event that I needed to prepare for. I realized that I had been existing in a more or less hand-to-mouth state, maintaining my sacred routine without focusing on any upcoming deadline or compelling event. I was dutifully complying, trying and often succeeding, but absent that essential horizon that motivates anyone to start actively preparing for and thereby manifesting an alluring future. It rarely matters precisely what event serves as the placeholder for such projected attention; almost any odd thing can provide the necessary anticipation, and any impending difference might suffice. In my case, the installation of a long-wished-for irrigation system has been providing my motivation. With the drought continuing, the new system should allow me to sustain my gardens using only a small percentage of the water I’ve previously used. Further, I will no longer need to set hoses at three o’clock in the morning during peak summer season to try to avoid midday, near-instantaneous evaporation. This irrigation system represents a liberation for me; consequently, I’ve been enthusiastically engaging in some seriously preparatory behaviors, relocating plants out of the trencher’s path and moving a shitload of decorative pebbles.

I am each day, especially through these EndDays, a little more aware of my slowly diminishing physical capacities. They still seem largely illusory to me, though I’m almost certain that some underlying physical realities are influencing my experience. I feel more tired than I remember feeling before, and my limbs tend to feel sorer after much less exertion than I remember from before. A chore that might have once taken an hour can now consume a whole morning or more. I sometimes catch myself engaging in what sure seems like dottering behavior, and now that I am a great-grandfather, I suppose dottering behavior should no longer prove to be completely alien to me. I feel more delicate than I’d grown accustomed to feeling. I carry a few more pounds around the place, too, so I guess my efforts should seem a tad more taxing.

I rest on my laurels more than I used to, too, but then I have more past accomplishments to draw from than I used to. I remember when I toted the pebbles from around the garden pond to spread around the gazebo. That job took days and involved considerable heavy lifting. I felt grateful then when I’d completed that effort, thinking to myself that I’d probably never have to engage in something like that around here again. Except the irrigation people need to dig a ditch from the back corner of that gazebo out into the middle of the side yard. Someone will have to move the pebbles covering that stretch, and it looked like I would have to be ‘it.’ I hadn’t been ‘it’ in a while. I actively procrastinated at first, blaming it on these damned EndDays lack of motivation. I’d prioritized every other preparatory task before that one, and finally got far enough down the completed list to leave me with this one. I began by cleaning out the gazebo, a toe in the water of the real work at hand, but a necessary precursor that really needed doing, I explained to my better self, since some of the stuff I’d stashed behind that gazebo would get moved inside so I could remove those pebbles.

Possums had been pooping back in that corner. Their leavings were liberally smeared all over coils of stored garden hose and those pebbles. I used the better part of half a roll of paper towels cleaning up that stinky mess, though the stench still hangs in my sinuses. I moved the hoses and some sprinklers, then assembled my impressive collection of empty cat litter tubs. I’ve used these to organize my basement workbench and garage messes for years. It just so happened that most of them were empty at that moment, so I decided that they would serve as the temporary storage place for my pebbles. I held my old D-handle scoop shovel and started scraping, emptying shovel-fulls into the first box. I ended up with a half-dozen or more filled boxes, heavy as all get out, dutifully filled, then handtrucked out of the way of the trenching effort. I felt exhausted but also exhilarated, for I was fully prepared for my long-anticipated fate to finally catch up with me. I might have been five years older than I had been when I originally moved those pebbles around that gazebo, but I was apparently still capable of working myself to a successful, satisfying exhaustion.

Damn these EndDays that burgle my horizon. They focus my attention on utterly meaningless moments. Those superficial plotlines smother my perception. No, the end of the world is not imminent, and even if it were, nothing about any present could disclose whatever might be coming next. I have been living in phony anticipation! It’s up to me to properly prophesy and so manifest my own damned future, however actually damned it might ultimately prove to be. I must maintain my own agenda, as if that broader, seemingly grander, over-publicized public one couldn’t possibly matter, even if my replacement focus perceives no further into the future than a sprinkler running without my intervention at three o’clock on some midsummer morning to avoid mid-day evaporation. Amen, again, with real damned purpose this time!

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz