Mere Anarchy
Nov. 5th, 2010 01:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
frarjohnTURNING 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?
--The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats (1919)
I have been surrounded by a feeling of nameless dread the past while.
Sigur Ros - Refur
I wonder if it's merely myself, that I'm the exception from the general rule, but I'm not sure about it. I wonder if this is how people felt at the Fin de siècle, or if this was the animating spirit behind Yeats' monument to a fearful future.
Nervous Doll Dancing - Les Pommes
There was much to-do about voting here in the American Republic earlier this week, for all the good it did (Before you berate me, yes I did vote). But the way people talk about this political merry-go-round we ride makes me wonder what the damn point is. Politics will not save your soul, no matter which party you vote for. The whole edifice feels like it's collapsing on top of us, and the pundits and the puppet-masters of both parties tell us 2 years will set it aright? I haven't been able to fix my life in 4 years, and I'm damn sure my problems are simpler than those facing this country.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Dead Flag Blues
I think we're all running around as chickens with their heads cut off. Fear is the animating spirit behind our civic movements, such as they are, and courage is little more than an empty platitude we use to soften the shell-shock of broken veterans.
Where does this leave us?
I think I need to learn Hope. Not hope in politics, not hope in the next big product, or hope in the newest medical study, or even hope in my own intellectual achievement, but that rare virtue of Hope.
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?
--The Second Coming, William Butler Yeats (1919)
I have been surrounded by a feeling of nameless dread the past while.
Sigur Ros - Refur
I wonder if it's merely myself, that I'm the exception from the general rule, but I'm not sure about it. I wonder if this is how people felt at the Fin de siècle, or if this was the animating spirit behind Yeats' monument to a fearful future.
Nervous Doll Dancing - Les Pommes
There was much to-do about voting here in the American Republic earlier this week, for all the good it did (Before you berate me, yes I did vote). But the way people talk about this political merry-go-round we ride makes me wonder what the damn point is. Politics will not save your soul, no matter which party you vote for. The whole edifice feels like it's collapsing on top of us, and the pundits and the puppet-masters of both parties tell us 2 years will set it aright? I haven't been able to fix my life in 4 years, and I'm damn sure my problems are simpler than those facing this country.
Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Dead Flag Blues
I think we're all running around as chickens with their heads cut off. Fear is the animating spirit behind our civic movements, such as they are, and courage is little more than an empty platitude we use to soften the shell-shock of broken veterans.
Where does this leave us?
I think I need to learn Hope. Not hope in politics, not hope in the next big product, or hope in the newest medical study, or even hope in my own intellectual achievement, but that rare virtue of Hope.
