Alphonse Legros:
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones (1833–1898)
(1879 )

"…I'm wishing that I'd just stayed home, where my heart already was."

As the grand planned in-ground irrigation system installation spills into its fourth day, my usual composure slips away from me. I sit uneasily, unable to watch the unavoidable desecration happening out in my sacred yard. This has long been my place, almost a secret garden, reserved almost exclusively for The Muse and me. We only very rarely ever invite anybody else into this lair. We are both particularly particular about where we place plants, how we water, and how we mow. We would never even think of hiring an alien to weed or mow. We wouldn’t expect them to understand. Indeed, we would be certain that they couldn’t understand, and not just because we wouldn’t prove capable of explaining, though it’s doubtful we could adequately explain the boundaries of acceptable behavior there to any alien other.

This place isn’t merely special, it’s our special. To see a crew scrape off all my lawn, wounded something deep inside me. Yes, that grass had grown tired with moss and oxalis intrusions, leaving bare stretches where red clover reliably took over, but I knew every cubic inch of that lawn. Now it’s gone, replaced for now with trenches crossing once inviolate space now violated, culminating in the irrigation system installer and owner of the company tromping through our favorite bleeding heart bed, smashing half the plant under his indifferent boots. I slipped a sarcastic stiletto at him in response, imploring him to be careful. I had cleared a path to provide access, and he, in mindless haste, chose to forge a shortcut. I’ll have to apologize to him in the morning.

It would have been infinitely better had I taken a few days away while the surgery took place, for I have never had any stomach for scalpels and sutures, but my presence proved necessary, though only barely. Some questions only I could answer. Others, I’d ask, though they didn’t seem to matter, for I had been cast as the naive owner, ignorant of the finer details of modern irrigation systems. Heck, I still haven’t managed to access the app that’s supposed to control this new infrastructure. It employed that ‘we sent you a code’ technology that never sends a code, and no, it didn’t end up in any of my many spam folders, either, though The Muse received a code on her first attempt. I would occasionally be called out of my coma to respond to some question or be called to paint some piece that needed to match its surroundings. Late yesterday afternoon, I learned that the installer had managed to strip off some of the paint I’d so painstakingly applied to avoid painting the parts in place during installation. I felt worse than merely irrelevant. I will be painting them again, in place, then, later.

I feel Unsettled. I stand between idea and realization, an inherently disquieting location but common as sand. I surprise myself with the depth of my sense of dislocation. My frustration prevents me from focusing on an alternative activity. I managed to half-heartedly start thinking about promoting my newly published book, though, as I reported in last week’s weekly writing summary, it’s not really available yet. It might be published, but the catalogs have not yet registered its presence, so it cannot be ordered. I did, while sitting Unsettled, receive a call from a podcast called News of the World. They wanted to interview me and offer me full, permanent rights to recordings of the podcast episode for use on my own website to promote my Cluelessness book. I had reportedly been chosen from only five new titles considered this week and was selected at number three. They’d already scheduled the interview date, May 13. I saw the next part coming. The price: just slightly less than I’d paid to have the manuscript copyedited, a small fortune in my world. I declined the opportunity for infamy, though I felt that familiar old twinge of impending notoriety. I don’t really want to be anybody but what I already am. I checked, and that operation is a well-known scam focused on fleecing newly self-published authors who haven’t discovered how to promote their work, sponsored by casinos, and has no fan reviews. They homogenize every title to make it just as salable as toilet paper. That process would prove more painful than watching my garden grown automated sprinklers. I tried it on my Blind Men and the Elephant book. It didn’t work, except to leave me feeling even more deeply Unsettled.

These transitions from what I already am into something purportedly better always involve some form of the old familiar giant step backward. Forward progress always, always, always involves more going backward than our planfulness ever imagines. This explains why projects typically prove to be dissatisfying, often infuriating. We imagine seamless transitions that this world cannot allow. Should we prove capable of immediately making dreams come true without this inevitable regression, possession would no longer be capable of being nine-tenths of anything, much less the law. We simply must have persistence of presence and almost unbearably difficult passages, or else change might replace our essence. Our essence was intended to be inviolable, an endless echo, and not just any old thing we might switch out on a whim and feel good about.

I will begin again, I suppose. I see an opportunity to further improve my yard’s soil before the sod installation. I’m seriously considering getting a few bales of peat and a rototiller to improve the friability and drainage of my already incredibly fertile soil. Once the sod’s installed, I’ll be stuck with what I’ve got essentially forever, at least it will certainly prove to be forever for me. I might rather leave another legacy, though leaving that will certainly involve a fresh set of Unsettling experiences. I’m at that part of the Hero’s Journey, where I’m wishing that I’d just stayed home, where my heart already was.

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz