Wild With Possibility: teen diaries of Alysse Aallyn

Friday 6 Oct 67

My personal feeling about novels, poems & plays is you get out of them who you are. They are mirrors. Alas at this institution Art is seized as a Chance to Indoctrinate the Faithless in Someone Else’s Opinion. Which if you don’t regurgitate on test you get a “Z” and are sent to: “The Principal for Punishment. The Whole Class Will Remain Three Hours After School…Silence!” (Miss Goggins.) I guess Kafka (who lived at HOME and worked in insurance) knew what he was talking about.

Mon 9 Oct 67
“It’s really true that nothing matters…in coconut grove.”
Any coconut groves left in this weary world? My usual answer to depression is to plunge myself into reading – psychoanalysis this time – Jung & Freud.

Much more satisfying than poor Swinburne with his roster of pain& struggle. Novel I’m currently writing, To Die at Noone currently retitled As I Weave My Winding Sheet.

Tues. 10 Oct 67
I am going insane but I still don’t know whether I’m doing it on purpose or not. The thing I hate about insanity is its implication of weakness. Maybe it’s just my plan to get out of this place and be allowed to go home. I must be strong. I wouldn’t submit myself to Freud – I can’t imagine sharing the planet with any being who really knew me. Poor foolish girl with delusions of grandeur…

Depression can be so subtle you don’t know it’s over until it’s gone. Currently lying in bed allowing its waves to wash over me. Every one of my nerves has a thousand split ends. Someone dropped books in the hall in front of me and I just stood there and screamed. Wept in the most degrading fashion in front of an ever-enlarging series of sympathetic fossils. Pre-menstrual distress was decided upon. Miss Beeston offered sleeping pills!!! Didn’t accept – who knows what she would do to me once I was in a helpless condition. She’s the one rumored to have murdered her lover with a javelin during the 1936 Olympics. Miss Cluny offered psychiatric help (also refused.)

Master Gwill did one good and one bad thing today. He gave me a B+ on a paper I personally thought was trashy (Bad) and told me my writing showed “maturity”. (Good. There’s a new one.) As I Weave getting increasingly amaranthine soon to break down utterly. Alas. Simply don’t know how to manage transitions. Yet.

Still hoping to date (I never learn.) Don’t want to be alone forever. Aynsley and I not getting along very well – she’s going through a bad period too. It’s Quits Again with Mr. Handsome. Plus she finds my insomnia very hard to handle (I don’t like it either.) Climbed a tree the night of the Fall Dance (I had to get away from Simon somehow) and fell in love with a voice I heard up there. Don’t know who it was. I was very nice at the dance. (I even danced with Scooter Obie!)

Midnight, Fri 13 Oct 67
If this is unreadable do not blame poor Little Me. Drank coffee till my hands jazzed. Tues. night was an all time depression low. From that point one can only rise. Reading Freud’s life by Ernest Jones has given me “neurasthenia”. Split completely into two personae, one speaking and one pretending to listen. Master Gwill took one of us aside (but which one?) and told us not to waste our talents and wither away. We looked at him owl-eyed.

He told me to put on a “one woman show”. I don’t want to do THAT but it does suggest an Escape Route. Senior project at a Phila. Theatre would give me two weeks off! Must investigate.

Strange letter from Dan including one ticket to The Homecoming! Hmm…if I went who would I meet there? I sent him a cold letter saying you broke up with ME and demanding the other ticket.

Then called Mom all excited that I might be living at Pewter Hill during Senior Project I got a tart lecture about Changing My Ways and Not Roaming the Halls At Night. (But I’ll have my own floor!)

Came a cropper with Aynsley too who wants to “clean together”. Ugh! It is bad enough doing it all without someone watching me! (We already have white glove inspections!) How will I make it to June? I was hoping to get TB but it looks like that’s not going to happen. Uh oh, burned my finger with an illegal candle and serve me right.

Sun 15 Oct 67
Cured myself with a meal per to Philly where Casey and I saw Pinter’s magnificent Accident! Bogarde, Seyrig, York, Knox. What can I say! We were both overcome! Every scene was a mini-movie – the abandoned dining table. The broken car. Remaining in memory forever.

Master Gwill brought me a pile of theatre books. Yay! Realized even though I am not happy there is no reason to be depressed. Dinner with Casey at the Nichols’ (pizza) where she is babysitting.

11:40 PM
Weird phone calls from “IBM Computer Research.” Both Aynsley and I talked to them till we got angry. Fishy. Suspect Dan’s roommates.

Mon. 16 Oct 67
3 gory chapters of Amos in Bible. Ripped up pregnant women, disturbed bones & general acts of O.T. vandalism. Feeling annoyed that this is presented to us as “philosophy”. Wrote my Bible paper on “Freedom & Discipline” about psychoanalysis and submitted it with considerable relish. Ha! We’ll see what he has to say about that!

Enjoying NY Times Book Review about Games People Play. Agreeing with Dr. Berne about behaviorism. Freud says “personal fulfillment” as a goal is naïve.

Try to talk about theatre with Master Gwill. He is rather slick and shallow and trying to maneuver me into a “liberal arts college” because “it is a very good thing.” Feel I’m being “indulged” so I can be “managed.” But he has the good idea of starting a hobby called Actors Seminar. I promised him I’d join.

Dan called me at lunch at his most pathetic. Promised to send the other ticket. Who would I go with? I said Casey, wouldn’t that be appropriate? His ex-girlfriends out for the evening together! He said only if we talk about him. I said that’s guaranteed. Hung up the phone to Dropped Jaws on Girls’ End. Am I a monster or a role model? Thoughts are divided – it is neck and neck with disapproval having a SLIGHT edge. Just the way I like it.

Reed and I teamed up in English together. I continually underestimate that boy but I think he underestimates himself. I was so afraid he’d sneer at my poetic talents but he performed my dialog with respect (he has yet to write his own.) And it’s about him! Still, he refuses to join Actors Seminar. We tried walking out of class together but we were out of step. Invited him to tea with my parents Parents Day if his aren’t coming. He says, “I hate tea.”

I said, “Now I remember.”
He said, “You think it’s the cure for everything.”
I said, “It is.”
He said, “To each his own escape…” Uh oh.
Is that a yes or no?

A Good Acting Exercise for Actors Seminar would be…
a) show you love someone without speaking or touching them.
b) Same; someone you’re uncomfortable with

Here’s my dialog:
Girl: Persecuted recluse who likes to be nice to everyone in hopes of making friends. Plaintive.
Boy: Young rebel caught up in the novelty of rebellion.
Scene: The Varsity Hockey Field on Friday night. Girl’s attention drawn to Boy who is running around field whistling.
G; Who’s that?
B: What?
G: Who are you, swooping around like that?
B: It’s really fun. You should try it.
G: Yes, but who are you?
B: It’s only Clarence.
G: Clarence do you feel all right?
B: Yes.
G: Then why are you swooping like that?
B: Don’t call it swooping. Swooping is a coarse word.
G: Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just the word that came to mind.
B: If I don’t swoop it makes my head ache strangely.
G: Maybe you should go to the infirmary.
B: They can do nothing for me there.
G: Oh well, then, I’ll leave you to you –
B: Please don’t. Isn’t the moon wild tonight?
G: You should see the lake! It looks like silver punch bowl of grape juice! And then when the moon went behind a cloud it looked like – I can’t remember what else it looked like. It was only seconds ago and yet I can’t remember.
B: Maybe I should go look.
G: No, it wouldn’t work.
B: Why shouldn’t I look? I’ll go if you want.
G: I’d rather swoop.
(They swoop for a while.)
G: I guess I just don’t have the technique.
B: You look funny.
G: Let’s go to the lake!
B: No, it’s probably all gone by now.
G: How could it be?
B: Well, the part I didn’t tell you…
G: Are you drunk?
B: Have you ever seen a drunk person walk this straight?
G: No.
(They walk awhile.)
G: I don’t feel right. It’s like we’re on different wavelengths.
B: Or planets.
G: You don’t seem all there.
B: Is anybody all there? Don’t you find this place emotionally stifling? Every once in awhile you’ve just got to get away.
G: I go for a lot of walks but I still feel chained down.
B: Yeah, I know what you mean.
G: I wish we could go to the top of the hill and just take off.
B: Fly away! Yeah, yeah!
G: I’m so glad you understand me.
B: Isn’t it a groove?
G: I’ve been looking all my life for someone to understand me.
B: This is like The Early Show. I just want to have fun. I’m not one who wants to go around understanding people. This whole evening is starting to feel like a bad trip. I’ll take an 8×12 cell to a neurotic girl any day.
(Girl bursts into tears.) END

Wed 18 Oct 67
Devouring Freud voraciously. I am on the last chapter. Now to The Interpretation of Dreams which I won’t rest until I read.

I had a dream myself last night. It was more of a nightmare. I was at a party wearing my RA t-shirt talking loudly about how much I hated Robin and how I never wanted to see him again. So when he emerged from the crowd I was frightened! He had a skull like death – his eyes were black pits – he was garishly made up with lots of rouge on his yellow-powdered face. His hair seemed stiff and dyed – I was terrified but I didn’t want to take back what I’d said. I backed right up into a closet – the last thing I saw was his arrestingly ugly face. He never spoke, touched me or changed expression – he was like a wax figure in a horror museum. The closet was very small with sliding doors like I used to have in my room at Brockton. Genevieve wrote “Alysse is a nothing” inside it for lack of a better insult.

I know the dream went on and on but I forget it at that point.

Interesting about closets! We played a lot of games in that closet and my memory – the smell of the wood, the shoes, etc – was perfect. I used to read The, Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in there just in case…The dream reawakened the small and I can smell it right now.

According to Freud dreams are wish fulfillment. I don’t think so.

DREAM OF FREUD’S WOLFMAN

The window opens of its own accord.
He’s catapulted forward; waked.
Outside, the walnut tree is hung with wolves
Each to its branch; they watch him

Blankly. Stillness has its
Consequence. They are fat
As lambs ready for castration; round
As dogs; white as mother’s underdrawers.

Such tails! Thick tails
Perked and listening!
Blue snow rumples up the bedclothes; stiffens
Into plaster. This sky leads nowhere.

The child’s eyes are frozen like the window
They do not close; this tree
Is butchered at the crown; it will
Not grow.

The wind that frosts the room is welcome
Stirring like a scream and like a scream
It alters what it sees.
The wolves levitate.

What they know the child
Must discover.

By the way, now that I know what neurasthenia is, give me depression any day. Speaking of Freud Casey says Genevieve “resents” our mother. Like Electra! Must confess I love Mom a little more than Dad. Genevieve has always been the opposite.

Sat on the hearth in Dr. Gilmour’s East Room seminar, wild rain lashing and thrashing outside, my back to the dying fire, wearing one of my Scottish knit wool dresses, dreaming I was a little girl again wearing a white nightgown with Princess Alysse embroidered on the shoulder, when who should appear but Reed, wet from the rain, his skin glowing. Gave him my place. Have I wronged that boy? Everyone thinks so.

“Do I keep falling in love just for the kick of it,
Stammering through the thin and the thick of it
Hating each old, tired trick of it
Know what I am? I’m good and sick of it!” (Sweet Charity.)

Senior pictures a frightful mistake. I really need someone else’s, but whose? Jean Harlow, by choice.