| Stanza Five I struggled to my feet. I rode past destruction in the ditches with the stitches still mending 'neath a heart-shaped tattoo. Renegade priests and treacherous young witches were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you. When last we left the Captain, he was "down," wandering lost in the nigredo, the darkness of unconscious hell. Now, it�s the narrator who struggles to rise, to get back on his feet. In himself he recognizes the Captain, and picks himself up off the deck. I rode past destruction in the ditches with the stitches still mending 'neath a heart-shaped tattoo Back on the Road, the narrator surveys the damage of GenderWar. Yet he lives, and walks free, while others eat mud in the trenches. Why? Apparently some kind of emotional surgery has been performed as result of his constancy of love, and sharing of energy ("sending his thoughts") with his Beloved. He's been under elvish knife, and is healing. The "heart-shaped tattoo" refers, possibly, to the excision of the delusions of romantic love, and the replacement, under stitches, of a higher, more inclusive love. This recalls standard operating procedure for spiritual transformation. Typically the initiate seeking understanding or power must first be "disassembled" psychologically, and often physically, before he can be reconstituted in more potent, finished form. renegade priests and treacherous young witches As the narrator/Captain passes through the Wasteland, he encounters mercenaries on the front, figures still operating out of motivations of control, power, and propaganda. These are representative of the Toxic King and Empowered Witch, inferior gender energy and identity in the culture. Both are regressive archetypes. The priest is renegade because he subverts authority into obfuscation, social control, comfort, exclusion, hypocrisy. He is male energy failed of courage, impotent before the dominating feminine. In one aspect he is the modern "progressive" Leftist, terrified to bone of female touch, sexuality, and emotion -- and his own addiction to it. As compensation, he hides behind Mother Right's iron skirt, one foot on the accelerator of his career, the other on his brother's neck. He serves local masters and mistresses. Others do his thinking and living for him. The witch is treacherous because she affects kindness, concern, and �protection of the innocent" while occultly seeking power, control and personal gain. She is young and (though unstated) perhaps beautiful physically. Like the priest, she is essentially a weak being, not empowered of her own mind in spirit of service, but easily led by groupthink towards psychic comfort, vengeance, and personal aggrandizement. were handing out the flowers that I'd given to you This is the most heart-rending line in the song, because it zeroes in on the betrayal of love, on its immense waste, so prevalent in human history and affairs, and so epidemic in America. (This waste is by no means limited to human being.) The flowers -- the love, respect, and gratitude -- given by the Captain to his Beloved have been stolen by male and female elements in the culture pretending to stand for justice, wisdom, nurturance, righteousness, and spiritual grounding. In our age of the Whopper, as Dylan complains in his "Idiot Wind" indictment of the Empowered Witch, "what's good is bad, what's bad is good." Witch and priest are inverters and perverters of the Word. They are the profiteers of GenderWar, still in power at this moment, still dominating species consciousness. Pretending to service and spirituality, they instead serve themselves and their narrow agendas. They are vampires, Thieves of Love. Stanza Six The palace of mirrors where dog soldiers are reflected. The endless road and the wailing of chimes. The empty rooms where her memory is protected, where the angels' voices whisper to the souls of previous times. This stanza is transitional and preparatory. It gathers emotion and allies for the transfigurations of the final three stanzas. It mines history and esoterica for gems of metamorphosis. It's overriding motif, introduced in Stanza Four, is of the circularity, and inescapability, of human intent, emotion, and action within the Wheel. Human thought and deed swim in closed-loop. The stanza's corporeal analogue would be "treading water and paying dues." the palace of mirrors Linear time, illusory, is played out in funhouse maze, karmic straightjacket, labyrinth caught in historical bull, a "palace of mirrors" reflecting back to humanity the positive or negative energies infused into the collective soul. where dog soldiers are reflected These magic mirrors flip-flop ages and roles, reveal "dog soldiers," warriors of elite Cheyenne societies fighting U.S. incursion immediately following the Civil War. These may be the "dogs ... going to war" in "Cat's in the Well" (1990), a song bemoaning that "the gentle lady is asleep." Again the theme is war, and hopeless war at that, last-ditch desperation, fractaled down history from basecamp of Ur-War. Release from our self-constructed Wheel is possible only through the grace of dualistic integration, beginning with human gender. the endless road and the wailing of chimes The chimes wail for the same reason St. Paul's Creation "groans for rebirth" -- terror, ignorance, waste and greed rule the planet, from human relations to microbial interaction. All suffer here. the empty rooms where her memory is protected These are the cells of the monastery, cave, prison, trailer, cardboard box and hermitage, the haunts of the Captain, guardian of the sleeping lady, companion of the grail. |
| Part ten of twelve |
| "Coniunctio: Changing of the Guards" |