One can only assume that when WB Yeats wrote the poem The Second Coming in 1919 he was rather more focused on the recently ended Great War, his pregnant wife nearly dying from the 1918-19 influenza pandemic, and the Irish Rebellion, but it applies to my afghan too.
I’ve been on a multi-year afghan bender, and why I decided that making blankets was my thing, I’m not entirely sure, but with multiple (ten *cough*, ten) current blanket WIPs this obsession shows no signs of abating. I am particularly fond of the granny square, which begins in the center and grows outward. Those familiar with crochet will likely be aware of the “magic circle” which is a nifty trick that allows you to start in the center of a motif without joining a circle of chains.
Upside? It’s easy and tightens up like a dream, leaving no pesky hole in the middle. Downside? If you don’t take great pains to secure the end, that neatly tightened circle is gonna open right back up again.
The center literally did not hold.
But back to 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,
In Yeats’ cosmology, history plays out as a series of epochs or “gyres.” The widening gyre is the current era of modern civilization that is spiraling out into chaos. The rest of the poem describes a vision of the future that subverts the imagery of the ‘second coming’ from the arrival of a heroic savior to the coming of a dark beast, “suggesting that civilization’s sense of progress and order is only an illusion.”
If we’re being honest, I’m rather less interested in the religious imagery in the second half of the poem than I am in the implications for the 2nd law of thermodynamics in the first. Physics tells us that the universe began in a state of order with low entropy, and that things have been going down-hill ever since. The ever-expanding, ever-accelerating universe craves disorder and “mere anarchy … loosed upon the world.” Entropy will always, inevitably, increase over time, afghans will wear out (you were wondering if I was going to bring it back around, weren’t you?) and ultimately disorder and chaos will be victorious.
And yet.
According to astrophysicist Adam Frank, “the very act of trying is what defines being alive.” I heard this NPR interview when it originally aired back in 2013, and it stuck with me (and bless NPR’s archives for making it easy to find.) Frank goes on to say, “even more, it's that act of trying that makes life - your life, in particular - a cosmic victory. Life, you see, is the triumph of order over chaos. Life is order hammered out if only for a time. And with that effort, something new, something wonderful appears in the universe: creativity.”
In some ways Yeats was absolutely right. The center cannot (and did not) hold. Things will fall apart. Spend a few minutes perusing the day's headlines and you’ll see anarchy loosed all over the place. On the other hand, what’s our responsibility to push back against the inevitable chaos?
Things fall apart, and then we fix them until we cannot fix them anymore. If, as Jonathan Larson penned in Rent, “the opposite of war isn’t peace, it’s creation”, then the opposite of despair is mending.
It is a radical act of defiance to continually reinvest energy into a decaying system. The center will not hold; things will fall apart. But then we will put them back together.
Note: I wrote the initial draft of this back in the summer of 2024, and damned if it isn't more relevant now than it was even then. Also, you'll be pleased to know I finally fixed the hole in my afghan.
References:
Essay on W.B. Yeats' poem, The Second Coming.
NPR's "Don't Try to Clean That Messy Desk," interview with Adam Frank.
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