Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones:
Perseus Cycle 7: The Doom Fulfilled
(1882 )

“…it matters how we answer when we ask ourselves this one absolutely essential question…”

WhatDidYouDo when the world was going to Hell? Did you doomscroll in resignation or defiantly curse your obviously undeserved fate? Did you take to the streets to protest the unfair outcome? Did you write a haughty letter to the editor insisting upon what should have been done, what still might be done to avoid the worst-case scenario? Did you just tend your garden as if tending garden might be the best anyone could contribute, given the unfortunate circumstances, nurturing a few more hours in heaven before finally submitting to the apparently inevitable? Did you encourage the fall, believing in the transformative potential of some well-deserved time spent, even if it’s spent in God’s penalty box? Did you rail against the unfairness or quietly submit? Did you purchase an AR-15 class weapon to defend your Second Amendment rights? Did you hoard or sacrifice? Were you generous or stingy under the pressure? Did you cheer the political cowardice that led us all there or demonstrate genuine political courage, whatever that might entail?

This world has been headed for Hell since before it was born, depending upon whose stories one depends upon. Or, this world has been trying to manifest as heaven against seemingly dedicated opposition, depending again upon which source one depends upon to provide their explanatory story. Some still insist that theirs are the hands of God, even in the face of seemingly preponderant evidence. Others depend upon the story that contends their hands are the devil’s. This contention seems palpable; the choices, though, tenaciously unremarkable. How could the same provocation be interpreted in diametrically opposite directions at the same damned time? How could the same flesh be simultaneously both good and evil, helpful and destructive, right and the wrongest wrong that anyone ever imagined existing?

I chose to improve my garden, and might have ruined it in the process. My garden had always been a little threadbare, with bald spots in the lawn and a couple of untamable beds. I figured it existed in The Muse and my image, a fair representation of our shifting attention spans. It usually took us a few weeks to transfer plants purchased in pots with April enthusiasm into their eventual place in soil. Some took longer, and we’d always lose a few to our tenacious inattention. I have two Coral Bells I purchased last summer that are presently thriving in their original pots, having somehow successfully overwintered without being placed in their ultimate resting places in the front tangle garden. I walked the yard’s perimeter in this morning’s predawn twilight and felt like an alien on my own soil. I walked on somebody else’s sod, past some barely anticipatory beds. I might have undermined my future trying to improve on my past.

What Did I Do while Hell descended? I must admit I helped somehow, though that was never my intention. I, like you, maintain a list of aspirational improvements, things that one day I hope might be done. I’ve completed most of that list that existed when we bought this place, and added more items than I care to remember, many of which I also dispatched. In that process, we’ve utterly replaced the place with something different. It’s not nearly the same, thank Heavens, or, I think I meant to say, “Thank Heavens,” there, for I invited plenty of devils into my home, too, and more disappointments than I care to recount. I still call this place The Villa Vatta Schmaltz, and I still even more firmly believe that finding this corner of this world qualified as a definite mitzvah for the ages, but I’ve been quietly undermining the place and myself ever since we took possession, like replacing an imperfectly servicable lawn with sod that sure seems like it’s somebody else’s.

What Did I Do while the world was going to Hell? I helped. I didn’t intend to help. Perhaps helping might just be another instantiation of the human condition. Find a newspaper from way back when, or go even further back, and then you’ll find clear evidence that the world then was also descending into Hell, for some or even for no particularly good reason. Those who came before us helped, too, often by attempting to improve their situations. That might not be the human condition, but the eternal condition of this world, and probably the equally eternal condition of the universe we inhabit, too. If entropy rules, we rightly have little say in the matter. Still, it matters how we answer when we ask ourselves this one absolutely essential question: WhatDidYouDo?

©2026 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #EndDays, #PureSchmaltz