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