Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation (1876)

This was the most remarkable writing week I've experienced since I began writing this series of series 35 quarters ago. The flow quickly and easily established itself, and I found myself following two patterns I'd barely imagined before becoming entranced by them. I was pursuing deeper understanding of the EndDays sensations that almost everyone I'd spoken with lately had been remarking upon. It sure seems like something's coming to an end: civility, democracy, sanity, the rule of law, common sense. I sensed that EndDays belong to that class of sensations that cannot be wholly validated, or, indeed, really experienced until they're over, since there's no way to determine between actual and mere sensation until the EndDays end. Counterbalancing those sensations, I stumbled upon the remarkable Days of Creation hexaptych by Pre-Raphaelite painter and designer Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones — a single work composed of six panels. These six panels functioned both independently and as a unified whole, which was precisely how I employed them this writing week. Each panel stands alone as the image for its corresponding EndDays installment, while the complete sequence forms a single, coherent creation narrative underlying the entire series.

In effect, each installment this writing week introduced a part of the universe that the bulk of this series will inhabit. I hope these will circumscribe the territory within which the following EndDays stories will unfold, the EndDays universe, if you will. I began by describing the EndDays context in EndDaysIntro, representing its illuminating light source, then pointed out one glaring difference between End and ordinary times: the meaning of Goodness, which represents my EndDays Sky. I then described the sense that everything's Collapsing, though Collapsing doesn't qualify as a state, like EndDays can't exist until after they've finished. This stands in for EndDays land and vegetation in this creation story. I then explored the sense of MassDeception that will probably remain a constant companion as I continue exploring this EndDays terrain. This represents the sun, moon, and stars in this EndDays creation myth. I reported on our wounded underlying mythos, introducing the concept of Fictos to describe the fictional basis upon which EndDays inevitably exist. This serves as this creation's creatures of the sea and air. This writing week's final installment introduced TheBeast, which, according to our creation myth, was created on the same day as The People, though The People were given dominion over TheBeast, a situation that goes backwards during EndDays. I ended this writing week, warmly anticipating the world that We, The People, are actively creating to follow our seemingly endless EndDays. Only eighty-four more installments until this series ends! Thank you for following along through this humbling and satisfying new beginning!

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Weekly Writing Summary

EndDaysIntro
“I intend this series to serve as a ring-side seat for witnessing the upcoming EndDays.”

This EndDays Story contains the introduction to my new series: EndDays. I believe we’re witnessing EndDays, whether or not our incumbent imminently crashes and burns, though I’m hoping he will.

I begin my thirty-sixth series on the first day of a new quarter, as I have since June 21, 2017, when I mustered my foolhardiness and declared myself a writer by committing to produce one story every morning — clear, unambiguous evidence. I have not yet faltered, and I haven't altered my approach either, beginning each series without an ending in mind, seeking emergent properties rather than preplanned conclusions. Why this series now? Because not a day dawns without some wise commentator wondering how much longer our present incumbent can last, having committed something on the order of at least one impeachable offense each day since swearing to uphold an office he clearly never intended to uphold. His lawless un-presidency will prove to be one for the ages, though the transformation he'd hoped to make on this country will succeed in the opposite way he intended. The conservative ideal that metastasized into its Nazi eigenvalue has utterly disgraced itself and plays on borrowed time. I enter this period hopefully, having successfully failed to become a conservative, sensing his house of cards finally near collapse. He will be impeached. He must be impeached. I intend this series to serve as a ringside seat for witnessing the upcoming EndDays. Welcome!

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The First Day (1870-1876)

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Goodness
“…a Goodness we will certainly have earned when it finally arrives.”

This EndDays Story finds me considering how EndDays twists the definition of Goodness. Any odd, even evil thing our incumbent does in self-sabotage might be considered an ultimately Good thing. Just sayin’!

Goodness changes its definition during EndDays. Each fresh infraction, each new low our self-saboteur incumbent manages to limbo beneath, each transparent misrepresentation delivered before a national audience, arrives as curiously reassuring — every insult bringing him closer to total collapse. This might be the only beauty in self-sabotage. Patriotism no longer means unquestioning support; refusing to tune into his State of the Union qualifies as a genuinely patriotic act. Religion has been taking it in the shorts, too, as the vast right-wing evangelical conspiracy against representative democracy undermines itself, potentially permanently solidifying that sacred separation of church and state our founders insisted upon. Each oppressive act awakens something dormant in the American spirit. Decent people cannot sit through such an insult without eventually acting up, and righteousness renders certain behaviors simply intolerable, which represents precisely what our incumbent cannot sense coming. EndDays Goodness creeps in on less than the tiniest cats’ feet, often seeming like it will take forever before manifesting fully, especially before the least of us absorbing the lion’s share of abuse. But despotism was never anybody’s destiny. We might be remembering what we should have never forgotten in ways we’re unlikely to ever forget to remember again. That ultimate Goodness, when it finally arrives, we will certainly have earned.

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Second Day (1870-1876)

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Collapsing
“…these thoughts haunt and terrify me every day.”

This EndDays Story reports on how nobody can credibly insist that anything’s Collapsing until after it finally collapses. Are we Collapsing or just experimenting? Who’s to say?

Collapsing cannot be validated until after it completes, which makes distinguishing it from mere growing pains genuinely frustrating — yet fifteen months ago our economy was the envy of the world, and it now appears to be leading us toward a depression not experienced in nearly a century. Our incumbent embodies the very ills he visits upon us, his announcements contradicting themselves minute to minute, his diminishing capacity treated as innuendo rather than clear and present evidence while the train wreck maintains its traditional slow-motion momentum. We are a nation occupied by hostile domestic forces cursing enlightenment as “woke” while seeking a greatness nobody has ever once experienced. Worse is what feeling surrounded by these notions does to me personally — I sense their deep-down wrongness yet have no convenient countervailing righteousness to inject into the wholly unnecessary argument. My outrage feels powerless. Our incumbent, a masterful Uproar Inventor, specializes in gumming up works, manufacturing ultimatums from minor disagreements, and Federal cases from nothingnesses. His physical limitations will likely ultimately decide matters, though his departure won’t magically restore our balance — pretenders will attempt to preserve the disunion before inevitably failing incoherently. That point of total collapse remains unthinkable, but terrifyingly not quite beyond the realm of my imagination now. I fret that we might be Collapsing, and these thoughts haunt and terrify me every day.

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Third Day (1870-1876)

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MassDeception
“His results can’t and don’t validate anything.”

This EndDays Story details a common characteristic of all Despotism: their failed attempts to utilize MassDeception to accomplish everything. It ultimately never works for them.

Every despotism’s future was written before it began, back when its founding deception still seemed charmingly wrapped in swaddling clothes. Peel away the misrepresentations, and you find not merely a foundling lie but something worse — an abiding, all-consuming hollowness inside. Despotism harbors nothingness at its core, soulless and incapable of receiving blessings, thriving on curses instead, forceful and seemingly powerful yet hollow. Its founding self-deception fuels an ethic of ever-expanding duplicity, inevitably producing MassDeception — where feedback fails to properly inform even its originator, daily reports espouse nothing but endless successes, and the gap between what’s experienced and what’s reported grows exponentially until nothing stands between the despot and his unseemly end. Press conferences become entertainment; lackeys amplify an unspeakable message; the emperor stands before us not merely naked but soulless. The legacy of every Despotcy must ultimately be anonymity — later generations marveling at what they couldn’t possibly comprehend, thinking less of a few forebears who fell for it. You just had to be there for the MassDeception to work. In the despot’s eventual absence, it reads more like a practical joke than a historical epoch. Despots weave worlds that make neither believable history nor inspiring fiction. His results can’t and don’t validate anything.

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Fourth Day (1870-1876)

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Fictos
“…if, indeed, our politics even survives this latest unbridled EndDays assault.”

This EndDays Story recounts how a founding mythos can be corrupted by an intruding fictos to undermine self-governance and herald in the beginning of EndDays.

Good governance ranks among the most boring human activities, which encourages politicians toward studied myth-making and performative statecraft while actual deals get struck far from any floor. The presidency carries by far the greatest volume of mythos, its responsibilities genuinely bordering on the mythical — yet checks and balances on presidential power prove more mythical than actual, and no President has ever been removed for cause despite several clearly deserving it. When governance so fails its founding aspirational myths that it becomes a fictional presence, mythos becomes what I call fictos — a living betrayal of founding creeds — and that shift marks the beginning of EndDays. Not borrowed time but stolen time, burgled and quintessentially irreplaceable, our future consuming our accumulated goodwill while cynicism becomes the currency of governance. Our present incumbent has transformed our solemn mythos into degrading running jokes, as if the populace were merely rubes. To so violate the governing mythos should be considered treasonous — those who undermine it attempt to murder the spirit inspiring the whole idea of self-governance. It was f.u.c.k.i.n.g self-evident, for cripes sake. Our mythos alone enabled our impossible existence to sustain itself for two and a half centuries, and those introducing their cheap-looking, phony gold-plated styrofoam Oval Office decorations place themselves beneath contempt. Their inability to act in defense of our governing mythos should rightly haunt them for the balance of their political lives.

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Fifth Day (1870-1876)

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TheBeast
“On the Seventh Day, The People rested.”

This EndDays Story follows the creation myth to continue building the stage upon which the balance of this series will perform. TheBeast and The People were reportedly created on the same day, though The People were granted dominion over TheBeast, not the other way around.

However unsettling the election results had seemed, TheBeast that emerged from that victory was much, much worse — a fool who fooled people, which only amplified their sense of betrayal. His inauguration came off as more like a funeral, that first day in office setting a fresh record for perfidy as a deep sense of dread echoed out from the quickly despoiled Oval Office. We were being screwed. The resistance responded immediately, with millions taking to the streets, as innocent children, full and legal citizens, began being deported to countries their families had never visited, and TheBeast typically refused to obey the courts that ruled against him. On the Sixth Day, Genesis insists, God created the animals, TheBeast included, and also bestowed upon man and woman dominion over the beasts of the field — not the other way around. Greatness cannot be found in any yesterday but only eternally ahead, and nostalgia is the self-saboteur's creed, never The People's. TheBeast's greatest unintended accomplishment was inspiring The People to rise up and insist upon their birthright again, shaking off the complacent prosperity that had rendered democracy a passive pastime. The People now know, and The People will never forget. We, The People, will have earned our Big D Democracy again, our lease having temporarily lapsed under the promises of TheBeast, ultimately only an uncommonly clever ass.
On the Seventh Day, The People rested.

Edward Burne-Jones: The Days of Creation: The Fifth Day (1870-1876)

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Save This Author From Selflessness!
I end this writing week summary with the hopefully now-familiar image of the cover of my upcoming book, Cluelessness, A Book of Mirrors. This work might be nearing its publication date, and though I don’t yet know the precise release date, I want to reinforce its impending appearance, lest you, dear reader, miss your opportunity to avail yourself of a copy (or several). My intuition wants to purchase everyone a copy, though I know my aspiration amounts to an utterly unreasonable personal expectation. Publishing requires that the author stand back and let the market have her way with his work, though an audience isn’t usually averse to some good-natured goading. Consider this announcement to be both good-natured, although at base, also a form of goading.

I suck at self-promotion, the single commodity our social media-infused society seems to insist upon. Instagram was not invented for introverts to introvert, but for them to pretend they’re more extroverted than they are. In this vein, all social media seems to insist that the user aspire to become a star, a spectacle, a potential embarrassment to their birth family and friends. It seeks attention, which might explain why this writer sucks at self-promotion, for I seek to be invisible. It’s always been my secret weapon, effective because it prevents me from stumbling into confrontations. If I’m not there, or if I’m there but nobody senses my presence, I’m secure from all but the most insidious forms of threat. I’m not standing up in the stands wearing a giant, gaudy-colored foam finger and blowing a bazoozoo. I’m cowering in one of the service tunnels, protecting my snack bar supper.

We refer to self-promotion as selfless, for some odd reason. I suppose it’s supposed to separate the self from the promotion and thereby not seem so self-absorbed. But what does one do who deals in disclosing about themself? If the promoted work represents a deep dive into selfness, how does selfless promotion translate into any sort of congruent representation? How does one package attempted authenticity in such gaudy packaging and survive scrutiny? Won’t those seeking authenticity see right through me? I’m certain I will see right through myself and thereby undermine my purpose in creating the work in the first place. Cluelessness …

These might be First World concerns, far from essential. Everyone seems most interested in self-promotion, and I feel like an idiot stepchild for failing to get with this program. So, I have this book, pending publication, demanding promotion, while I’m reduced to wrestling with identity issues. Better, perhaps, to imagine Cluelessness was written by Anonymous. I’ve always been wizard at promoting others’ products, and crap at promoting my own.

Buy my book when it’s released! Save this author from selflessness!

Thank you for consenting to following along again!

I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, to create the above story summaries, prompting with: “Please briefly summarize this story in the first person while retaining the original voice.” I manually copy-edited each result.


©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz