Utagawa Hiroshige 歌川 広重
Badger,
from the series “Mirror of Stone Rubbings of Views of the Provinces”
(Kohon meihitsu ishizuri kagami)
(Not Dated)

"Motleys might be the most reliable indicator of Prosperity's presence."

Prosperity seems to attract collections of things. The Muse collects Franciscan Appleware crockery, a pattern that began almost on a whim when I started fondly reminiscing about my mother’s Aunt Stella’s collection that I lost in my second divorce. I have a small collection of D-handled shovels that I maintain for no good reason other than that I favor them above the straight-handled kind. Our linen closet holds no linen, but exists more as an archive of our changing tastes in sheets and towels over the last thirty years. I have a friend who claims to own dozens of Tony Bahama tropical print shirts, bought to cheer himself up or on whims. I have a closetful of shirts distinguished by their very similarity; most are long-sleeved blue chambray. I tend to wear the same-looking clothes every day, with little actual variety. The Muse, on the other hand, has dozens of similar-looking “tops”, in a variety of colors, and a similar range of choices of pants and shorts. Her collection of clothes hardly qualifies as a collection, given the Motley range of styles and colors therein.

While The Muse recovers from her broken ankles, I have been trying to fulfill the role of wardrobe mistress since she can’t access her dresser or closet. I ask after her preference each morning after breakfast, then I go and inevitably fail to find what she so painstalkingly described. I’ll return with a red top that she swears isn’t the red she’d envisioned. I’ll bring shorts, but not quite the proper length ones. She provides size, color, length, and other identifying attributes, and I return with the wrong item on the first two or three tries. She insists that I’m going deaf while I’m certain she mumbles on purpose so that she can insist that I need to have my ears, if not my head, professionally examined. The search typically ends when she settles for something that actually exists, and the mystery deepens. After three weeks, we have a growing list of clothes she’s described that I can swear (where did I leave that stack of Bibles?) never existed. Nurse Jane Fuzzy Wuzzy’s responsibilities seem bottomless.

Our furniture fully qualifies as Motley, too, for it represents my furniture purchasing phobia iterated over my entire adulthood. We shop estate sales and accept hand-me-downs more for availability than for any unifying design. Our living spaces most closely resemble undergraduate digs, and we’re rather proud of our Motley context. Each piece of furniture has a story closely associated with it. The kitchen table reminds us of Dora Colley, from whose estate sale we acquired it. The chair I sit in every morning when I’m trying to decide what to write about came from the neighborhood Lutheran Church’s yard sale. My desk, from a long-defunct antique/junk shop in old Sellwood before it got gentrified out of existence. We live in a living museum as a testament to our Prosperity, though it might appear to anybody who hasn’t heard the stories that we’re just slumming it instead.

I have a motley collection of unpublished manuscripts. Someone asked me this week what I do for a living, and I responded that I’m a writer, though I know she believed I’d implied that that meant I make money for writing when I never have. I am a vanity writer. I apparently write for myself and a few friends, many of whom I’ve never met. When I survey my readers, I discover another Motley, a collection of obviously dissimilars. No unifying anything seems to classify them into an audience, and most, I presume, would decline the label if offered. My readers seem to stretch the definition of loosely related, their individual Venn diagrams overlapping along a single slim perimeter, and even then, not continually. Many of my readers dip in and out like distracted dancers, often not even watching whatever’s happening out on the floor. I write to feed my obsession to write, I suppose, and also to arm’s length feed those fortunate or unfortunate enough to happen into close enough contact to experience whatever tends to happen here. If that’s not a Motley collection, I do not know what one might be.

My book collection seems deliberately eccentric. If it’s a self-portrait, as some commentators have held, then it’s clear evidence of my schizophrenia. It probably accurately represents my shifting attention over receding decades. I was clearly into Self Helpless titles for a time before matriculating into psychology and family therapy. I once must have been more than passingly interested in the field of project management, though I never considered most of its literature really worth reading. I retained those works for reference. I have retained a few choice examples of ‘how to write’ books, none of which contributed more than a few tips that didn’t become the backbone or even the ribs of my current practice, which, unsurprisingly, seems to have become another Motley. I might claim to focus upon a single topic each quarter, but within each excursion, I tend to wander some, like finding Motleys lurking within Prosperity. Variety seems the inescapable side effect of all Prosperity. It might well be the spice of most lives, though it’s also the bane of each of its beneficiaries’ existence. Motleys might be the most reliable indicator of Prosperity’s presence.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #Prosperity, #PureSchmaltz