Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

Synchronicity

You could say I was a “success” at Circle in the Square, because I got the coveted ingénue part in the student production of Anouilh’s The Enchanted at The New Yorker Theatre. But I wasn’t happy. I thought I was as bad an actress as a dancer and it wasn’t gratifying because I wanted the story to be different. I wanted to be a writer! In fact, I felt I already WAS a writer. But I had absolutely nothing intelligent to say.

How to get my inner development synchronized with my outer existence? In other words, develop a professional life. I did realize I needed a string of degrees – how coordinate that with my abhorrence of Higher Ed? Enroll at one of the Antioch College experimental schools – the one in Columbia, Md, for a degree in Creative Writing.

Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk

Femininity’s  Everests

I climb them daily. Envy the crow’s

wombless contentment

As I stroll 

among the old

wrappers used

condoms; joints rolled like French

Letters used abused discarded.

What the crow envies is my

Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom

Battering-ram jaw 

baroque nose, the

 Greek depths through which

My eyes record their wanderings

Outside the convent wall,

The stalls, the chained-up lambs,

The  leaf-clogged swimming pools.

First act, second act, third act

Epilogue. 

Number days by seeking out

Life’s taproot;

Marking ages not my own;

Investing in some future;

All unknowing what anyone will make

Of these

Portentous Pleiades:

disparate sisters

Me, myself and I.