Things Fall Apart.

   I have taught this poem before, sometimes on its own, and sometimes with the novel that borrowed the line. I know the poem because Stephen King used it in The Stand, and everything I know about literature I learned from Stephen King. Here is Yeats' poem for your reference.

  The Second Coming 

BY WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Turning and turning in the widening gyre   

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere   

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst   

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.   

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out   

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert   

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,   

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,   

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it   

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.   

The darkness drops again; but now I know   

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

         I have, over the years, pondered this piece. from every angle. In 2008, and for a few years, I contemplated "What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?" I found it to be a chilling omen, a warning to politicians and countries who worship their leaders. 

       This piece, coupled with "I Am Waiting" by Ferlinghetti and The Zoo Story by Edward Albee, have infused and educated and buoyed and vexed and depressed me, sometimes like waves kissing the shore, sometimes like a high wind blowing my lawn chairs into the fence at two a.m., but always present. I am waiting. For what, I had no idea, but I was waiting.
       I believe that I still am.

       Things fall apart. The center does not hold.

       2016-2019 were a shit show, a time of great googley change, exhaustion and finally, 2019 was over. I believed that it couldn't last forever, that I/we/world were being broken, and that 2020, based on nothing more than the balance of the numbers, would be when it was put back together again. But first, it has to finish a burn. There is something else coming. And then the pieces will be collected and reformed into something new. The center will hold, because it's the center. Even if the Super Flu kills 99.9% of the population, the center holds. Humanity endures, good triumphs and in the battle you lose a beloved character.

        It depends on what you define as "the center". In The  Stand, a general is using the poem to  reference the power of the military and bio-warfare. The center cannot hold, there is always a glitch, a leak, a mistake. The center of military science, the center of the military industrial complex cannot hold-not when a biological flu is unleashed on the world. But the center---humanity---holds. The .001% core left behind must choose up sides and fight for their beliefs. Nobody is allowed to be a bystander. You must participate in your own salvation. You must participate in your own survival. There is no stadium seating, no audience. You are in the coliseum and you must face the enemy.  Your true center will hold, but the military complex or public education system will not. Things fall apart.  You will not. Your center will hold.

          That is how the center holds. When  you realize it's just you and your demons. 

          No spectators.

          No Facebook. No You Tube. No Cell phone.

          No Blog.

          You must allow yourself to travel a great distance in the wrong direction in order to come back a short distance correctly. (Regular readers know my reference, my beloved Mr. Albee.)

          Once you do that and you return: you're alone, center stage, awaiting the entrance of your foe.

          What rough beast is slouching toward you?

          It looks familiar. It sounds familiar.

          It should. It's yours.

          Your center will hold, but you have to fight. Stop giving up your power. Know the truth and wield it like a broad sword, a vorpol blade that snicker snacks. If the system is going to fall apart, you can't stop it, so you may as well move it along more quickly so you can get to the point.  Like the Tootsie Pop, you'll never know how many licks it takes for the center to fall apart, because you took a huge bite out of it.

         Sheesh, I need a runaway metaphor ramp. The gravel on the ramp is made of allusions and similes to help slow you down, much as you've stopped reading this rant.
         The center that does not hold is not yours. It's only relevant to things like paying your bills or sustaining friendships. Your center, your true center, will hold. And the bills will get paid. And the relationships will heal or not, whatever.
         Just stop that rough beast en route to Bethlehem.
         Scene.

n/a

I'M BAAAAAAAAAACK (and pretty rusty, so be patient)

   Hello

   Let me catch you up so we can continue:

   I'm no longer teaching lang arts at a suburban high school.
   I'm now teaching theatre at an urban high school. 
   I'm directing the musical at said urban high school.
   I'm also directing a musical at an engineering college.

   Now you're caught up!

   Today's rant is about air fryers. If one is not a person who cooks, anyway, the Keto diet is a challenge. I managed, somehow, to function on this diet for almost nine months and I lost 25 pounds. I do, however, doubt it was the food or my body "achieving Ketosis"-I never did the pee in a cup test, so I can neither confirm nor deny such a claim, but more likely it was due to my own inability to function in the kitchen. There was a lot of stuffed, baked chicken and Keto pizzas. I think of Goldie Hawn in Seems Like Old Times in her robe, hair askew, surrounded by dogs on the floor and pots on the stove trying desperately to replicate Aurora's chicken pepperoni. When asked how it's going she says "The dogs are half dead from tasting it." This is how I imagine Jim and Harper felt. They were pretty tired of stuffed, baked chicken. But they are adults, and if they didn't like it they could cook something else.

     I was unable to perfect any sort of breading in Keto. Almond flour just doesn't do it, and breadcrumbs and Penko breading contain my daily quantity of carbs. My almond flour breading is lumpy and sticks to the pan. The pan, you say? Yes, oven baked because that's what I had: an oven.

    Jim was gifted an air fryer at Christmas, much to my joy. I know people who swear by them and I was excited to give it a try. Of course, being off Keto meant using Penko breading for the chicken strips. The first round were a bit weird, dried out because I cooked them too long. The cookbook that came with the fryer said 14 minutes, so I did 14 minutes, but it dried out the chicken itself. So I adjusted to 11 and it was perfect, and it was cooked all the way through -stop thinking I poisoned everyone, including the dogs, I never under cook chicken.The air fryer is fantastic as long as you have something breaded, but again, I cannot manage the breading part.

    I decided to try fried cheese last night. Jim bought string cheese, and I carefully egg washed and dipped them in the Penko and almond flour---Penko has crunch but no flavor, I've become fond of the flavor of almond flour. Harper says it makes everything smell like cake. I did not look at the recipe because how hard can it be? I just looked at the time. I placed the dipped cheese sticks in the basket and started the fryer. Ten minutes later I opened the flyer to a basket of melted cheese mush with a breading blanket.

   The recipe clearly says to freeze the dipped cheese first.

   Too bad I didn't read the recipe.

   No problem, it's Saturday night and I have no other plans. I dip and freeze the cheese sticks for an hour. I then place them in the basket at the prescribed temperature and the prescribed time.

    And open the basket and....at least this time, the melted cheese mush had lumps in it.

    So this morning, I dipped and  breaded and placed the cheese sticks in the freezer to make later tonight. My hope is that several hours of freezing will help with the issue of melted cheese lumps. If not, please feel free to come over and I'll make you some lumpage!
    I dunno, every time I think I can do a cooking or baking thing it turns out that I can't do cooking or baking things. My children didn't starve, Jim cooks, and I can manage four things: meatloaf, any type of noddle and meat and cheese casserole, grilled cheese smammiches and pot roast. Nobody starved, but I also take no joy in cooking or baking things. It's frustrating because it never comes out the way it should, even if I follow the recipe exactly. It's like the recipe knows it's me and the ingredients conspire to screw me up, like band kids switching instruments on the sub.
     Jim believes we can make fried cheese work with egg roll wrappers.
     .....