Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

Rebirth –

I’m convinced the main attraction of the evangelical religious movement is that it offers the opportunity to be “born again.” But I believe that option is always available to you without the necessity of signing up to be a cog in a “movement.”

When I was twelve years old I read a James Bond novel in which he is washed up on a beach and needs to be nursed back into life without any of the previous appurtenances of his personality. I was very taken with this idea. Of course, it has literary antecedents in all the “castaway” and adventure stories of John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson. The question revolves around your essential self: do you have one? Or can even that be remodeled and rebuilt? This is the question warriors try to answer.

Warriors pare their needs down. We keep ourselves ready for action. We are shapeshifters and time travelers – if that sounds attractive to you, keep listening.

The first rebirth was rather brutal. At age 12, I was sent to live with my father’s sister and uncle and four boy cousins in Wayland, Massachusetts. Since these people didn’t believe anything my father believed I found this cross-training startling, and the more I behaved in my father’s image, the more I was punished. My uncle was enormously excited to have a pubescent girl in the household, snuck into my bathroom, groped and French-kissed me. I did my best to fend him off, while crushing on one of my cousins. In intervals, we exhibited social politeness. (I attended dancing class where white gloves were mandated for touching specimens of the opposite sex.) I also was taught to ski. Sort of. This hot-house atmosphere lasted only nine months.

My parents simply refused to listen to, believe in, or pay attention to any of this. I realized I needed to become a different person –the person I truly was, underneath, the person without all this reflexive training and behavior. And the question was, who was that?

The Kilning

“Shame” means

Should Have Already Mastered

Everything. Excoriating

That you couldn’t

Eviscerating

Failure on top of

Guilt.

Once fire retreats

Examine the scorch marks.

Yellow mud

Fuses into azure glass

Shining for

Eternity.