Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Studies of an Arm and Hands
(Not Dated)

This week’s EndDays dispatches arrived in the same week as Cluelessness itself — the physical copies of the long-awaited book finally landing on the porch in their plain brown box. The week held that particular tension between the personal and the political that EndDays has been delivering simultaneously. I read myself whole for the first time. I chased phantom typos through predawn light. I watched our incumbent’s Craziness spread through Congress like a communicable disease while his MakeUp spread across his face like a communicable disease. MakingBelieve turned out to describe both a despotism’s operating model and the condition of anyone credulous enough to volunteer to inhabit one. Apparently, Vacuity got elected president again. I came out the other side of this week feeling remarkably different for having read that thing I wrote.

Thank you for following along!

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Weekly Writing Summary

MakingBelieve
“That age-old truth never once stops stalking.”

This EndDays Story considers the fictional bases every despotism demands, even and especially this one.

In this EndDays Story, I examined how despotisms depend utterly on fictions — they begin with a lie and end when some age-old truth finally pierces whatever remains of their heart. The tenure in between amounts to an extended game of MakingBelieve, where demonstrating fealty requires publicly performing unquestioning acceptance of whatever fiction the despot demands. Believing Joe Biden stole the 2020 election serves as table stakes for inclusion in what still passes for the Repuglican Party — not because it’s true, but because faith requires no proof and does not rely upon truth. Those of us who cannot quite bring ourselves to believe the lies live complicated lives under any despotic administration, cheering each fresh embarrassment, and praying for the comeuppance that always eventually arrives. Every despot in the history of the world so far nurtured a little Peter Pan inside, extending adolescence into extreme old age. That age-old truth never once stops stalking.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Adoration of the Magi (1904)

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Vacuity
“…that’s what always happens when Vacuity LLC gets himself elected President of a country.”

This EndDays Story amounts to a history and a rant on the abiding presence of Vacuity.

In this EndDays Story, I traced the anti-polity sentiment that has followed us through the two and a half centuries since independence — the Dark Ages Conservatives who firmly believe that human rights present a genuine threat to their liberty, and who seem dedicated to E Pluribus Chaos as their enduring motto. These proudly ignorant and defiantly begrudging antimatter citizens joined Mosby’s Raiders and the Ku Klux Klan, and are, to a man, traitors. They now call themselves Survivalists and have apparently survived on meanness. They personify Vacuity: carelessly thoughtless, surprised when tariffs act like taxes, appalled when the courts hold their president accountable, preferring a king while treating every actual king with the same disrespect they’ve leveled at every President since Washington. That’s what always happens when Vacuity LLC gets himself elected President of a country.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: Studies of a Suit of Armor (1875)

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Erring
“Was any of his ever any different?”

This EndDays Story wonders if EndDays hold time for retribution or only time enough for acceptance when Erring.

In this EndDays Story, the first physical copies of Cluelessness arrived, triggering an out-of-body experience akin to witnessing a birth — emotionally complicated, immediately disrupted by what seemed like glaring typos in the first few pages. I left supper simmering on the stove, sat on the back deck, and began reading my strangely familiar work. I slept poorly, already drafting my indignant demands to the publisher. But the following morning, crouched in predawn light, I could not find the errors that had so troubled me the night before. I reread those pages again and again. Nothing. It turns out that EndDays are filled with such impressions — experiences that sure seem discouraging but cannot quite be confirmed. Time might not allow for restitution. Even if these were early days, acceptance would probably prove the best available solution. What’s a few imagined errors in a book about Cluelessness? Was any of this ever any different?

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: Phyllis and Demophoon

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Craziness
“I feel reasonably confident that there’s no pill for that.”

This EndDays Story considers how a chief executive’s Craziness infects the Cabinet and Congress, rendering the whole system temporarily incapable of acting.

In this EndDays Story, I traced the history of governments struggling to respond to their leader's incapacity — from King George III's madness and Parliament's fumbled attempts to reassign his authority, to our own Twenty-fifth Amendment, which might just as well have been written on toilet paper for all the use it's proven in practice. The problem is that craziness is communicable. Everyone who might act has already contracted a sympathetic case of pretty much the same craziness bedeviling their hobbled chief executive, which leaves the whole legislative branch hobbled alongside him. Everyone agrees that someone should act. Nobody sees themselves cast in that role. The political cost of admitting to any madness in one's party seems too goddamn onerous. And so the madder the better, the crazier the fewer questions are asked. I feel reasonably confident that there's no pill for that.
Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Madness of Sir Tristram (1892)

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SelfReference
“…I lay down for a well-earned nap I might never quite wake up from.”

This EndDays Story finds me immersed in SelfReference, experiencing the first full read of my freshly published book, Cluelessness. A beautiful and confusing immersive experience.

In this EndDays Story, I opened the plain brown box left on the porch and found my book inside — cover sticky with whatever they use to finish new paperbacks, smelling like new books, the cover image of me peering into a mirror, quizzically staring back at me. I immediately set down to start reading as a reflexive action. The immersion felt both calming and unsettling, familiar and gawdawful odd. Who was this character passing himself off as me? Time and space got displaced. I crawled through that first read, not wanting it to ever end, unsure if I could stand to finish it. The book lengthened as I read. I felt moved to tears a few times — private tears not included in the text, not even hinted at there. Something vast stands between those covers. I heard myself whisper, “Beautiful,” before I lay it down finished, in favor of a well-earned nap I might never quite wake up from. I’d never read anything even remotely like it before.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Mirror of Venus (1875)

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MakeUp
“Thank the Lord or somebody for such small blessings.”

This EndDays Story confirms that scripture underplayed what we would experience during EndDays, if only because no self-respecting Old Testament prophet could have unashamedly predicted what seems to be happening.

In this EndDays Story, I noted that scripture predicted strange things would appear during EndDays, but even an experienced Ezekiel could not have unashamedly predicted our Administration Still Remarkably Uninterested In Administering Anything. Perhaps strangest of all stands the now common practice of self-proclaimed conservatives wearing MakeUp — not surreptitious Just For Men applications, but spackle thick enough to qualify as Versailles-grade court cosmetics, complete with mouches. Our incumbent’s iridescent Florida fake tan stops short of his hairline, giving him a curiously demonic, haloed appearance. His Vice’s eyeliner renders him poorly drawn, a fact that confuses me whenever he rants against drag queens. Their MakeUp might be the only honest thing they present in public — a cover-up worn openly on their faces, disclosing their underlying insecurity to anyone paying attention. He wears his cover-up on his face for everyone to see and has never once given anyone a peek at whatever horrifying mess lurks underneath. Thank the Lord or somebody for such small blessings.

Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones: The Council Chamber (1892)

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Who I Always Was

Buy my newest book and write a review! (I retained this headline from my last Weekly Writing Summary!)

As of last week, you could order it from Bookshop.org or from Amazon. It's now much more widely-available, just as the publisher predicted.

For instance, now, if you'd prefer, you can order Cluelessness from VitalSource, for the modest price of R191.74 ZAR, VAT inclusive. This means that Cluelessness has crossed the equator to become available in South Africa, long a center of Cluelessness as well as hard-won enlightenment! It might be that the one follows the other. I learned to revile my Cluelessness long before I ever imagined reveling in it as a precursor, perhaps an essential, if not necessarily necessary, precursor to enlightenment. In our post-enlightenment environment, it seems that Cluelessness continues to thrive more or less unencumbered. Perhaps our once hoped-for notion that enlightenment might ultimately vanquish Cluelessness, gratefully only rendered it more useful: finally leveragable. No longer only a source of embarrassment. Thank heavens!

This week, I finally found Clueless offered on Portland’s Powell’s Books website, my long-time go-to source for buying books, though their listing included no explanatory blurb. Consider it to be an insider’s source, one where the buyers don’t need no stinkin’ alluring description to seal a deal because they’re already an insider. If you’re reading this, you’re an insider, whether you want to be or not. Nobody can ever unsee.

This has been my first full week with Cluelessness resident in my home. I look up from glaring down upon my keyboard, and see it staring me down from the top of the familiar pile on the left side of my physical desktop. I read it cover-to-cover, which might seem like no huge deal, but it proved to be an enormous revelation for me. Life-changing! I should never be the same again, thank heavens. Its presence encourages me to be on my best behavior, because I don’t want it to see me engaging in any disqualifying bad behaviors it might innocently see me apparently engaging in. Glimpses can be so damnably misleading! I’m doing my best, though I seem to repeatedly default to who I was before I started gussying up. Maybe I have finally become who I always was.

Buy the book. Write a review and post it where you can. I deeply appreciate the support you’ve given me without me hardly asking. Cluelessness has finally become a growing global presence, just as if it hadn’t already been.

Thank you, as always, for following along!

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I employed Claude.ai, a commercial AI-powered text editor, using it to perform repetitive copy/pasting work and 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