The Second Coming

I've never started my blog this early, but when I realized that William Butler Yeats was one of the June poets, I just knew what I was going to do.  I figured that I'd better write it now, before I cast on.

A poem by Yeats was brought up in the Bonus Materials for the second season of  'Sons of Anarchy.'  One of the characters, Opie Winston, has a tattoo across his chest that reads, "The center cannot hold, anarchy is the only hope.'  The first half of the quote is from Yeats' poem, The Second Coming.  I like that Ryan Hurst, the actor who plays Opie, chose the quote himself.

When 'Sons of Anarchy' began, I wasn't terribly fond of Opie as a character. (I was more of a Jax girl.  He looks so very much like the late Heath Ledger.)  He was just being released from prison for some nefarious act that he performed for the Sons.  Over two seasons, he's grown both as a character and on me.  He's had a crap load of  stuff happen to him that has made him evolve.  He was set up as a rat by an agent of the California Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives.  His wife was gunned down when she was mistaken for him while driving his truck.

I think that one of the things that bothered me the most about Opie was that he'd started to look like the uni-bomber.  It's the stocking cap, covering what I'd always pictured as dreads, and the ratty beard.  It is his character, though.  Then, he'd pull off that hat and he's got normal, and I use that word lightly, hair and he didn't seem quite so scruffy.

I decided that perhaps Opie might be a little more human that his rough and tumble appearance lets on.  Perhaps he might be able to curl up on the couch with his girl and watch a movie when he's not out wreaking havoc with SAMCRO on the Mayans or the Nords or the "One-Niners." (And yes, I saw him watching Horton with Lyla the porn girl and the kids, but that doesn't count!)

So, I've decided to make the Sinead Throw from Berroco.  I'm working it with Lion Brand Fisherman's Wool.  The colour is called Nature's Brown.  The cables, in their tangles, remind me a bit of anarchy, although they do have a pattern and they are ordered. Life with and within SAMCRO is just as tangled as the cables appear to be.  The colour makes it a bit more masculine than any other.  I guess the throw is more a snuggle with Opie and seeing that ink every time he sheds his SAMCRO outlaw leather vest and tatty stocking cap.

Here's the poem.

           THE SECOND COMING

    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: a waste of desert sand;
    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
    Wind 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?

                              By William Butler Yeats

Here are pictures of the finished throw.

 This is the whole afghan, folded over so you can see the top and bottom borders.

 This is a close up of the cables. 

Just another view.



Seasons 3 and 4 better show up sooner rather than later.  I may have to look into purchasing all 4 seasons.