Alysse Aallyn

Author: alysse

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

    Resources:

      To our father, we were the Four Princesses – Alyssiana, Genviana, Merrillana and Avrilana. He grew up with a mother, a sister, two brothers, a grandmother and four great-aunts in circumstances of extreme frugality in the Depression. Nonetheless, they were a family of snobs and social pretensions kept afloat by a “bachelor uncle” who made a fortune in the insurance business.

      My father came into the capital from his trust fund when he was 25 (I was born when he was 31) built us a house and rented out surrounding properties. He went into the construction business with an architect friend from college, then into the laboratory development business with one of his tenants. He replaced his blue-chip stocks with high-flying ventures like Xerox and Sony, which in the sixties was like coining money.

      By the time I was 11 he quit his job and went into philanthropic work in Africa. I was concerned that we would be “poor”. I had already seen the stark divisions in my Ohio hometown and I never aspired to shift to the other side of the tracks. He told me not to worry, but when I saw the desperate refugees from a war-torn country he was trying to help, I had to worry.

      My father had a yacht built, my beautiful mother bought high-end clothes, they invested in art and traveled all over the world, but one by one his daughters fell off the gravy train. We went to boarding schools and approved colleges, shopped at re-sale stores and were discouraged from thinking of ourselves as “rich.”

      My father bought a house in a 50 acre park (in the middle of the city!) and slowly filled it treasures acquired abroad. I felt guilty for all the money he gave me and aspired to pay my own way. I was relieved to dodge college – that was a big price tag.

      I achieved an artist husband like myself – a touring musician with a wonderful sound who could play anything. We bought a house in the woods and I settled down to write. I figured we were set. But I had confused “intrinsic” with “extrinsic” values which can be easily swept away. I didn’t have “resources”. When my “house of cards” collapsed I found myself sitting in a temp office, paid minimum wage, waiting in case someone wanted to hire me for my only known skill: typing.

      HORROR STORY

      Lubricity
      Darkens into sweat;
      We face each other
      Across the cooling dinner,
      Night by night
      Stiff as andirons
      Masterpieces seen best by candlelight
      To hide the cracks,
      Well-meant improvements by
      Another’s hand.
      A well-matched pair.
      A fountain sings but
      One tune only. It didn’t look this way
      Proceeding forward.
      Backward is a different view.
      I could have sworn that we’d last longer.
      I caught flak from my mother,
      Who cast a role in Wuthering Heights;
      Preaching doom
      In guise of cheer.
      All I wanted was
      Sufficient light
      To read my tarot; recycled
      Tea leaves brewed
      From your used bathwater.
      The leaves are dank and do not speak.
      I shiver with cold and you
      With anger; a
      Brace of disappointments.
      Speechless.
      There’s still too much
      We can’t admit.

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

      Wisdom –

        What is the difference between an old soul and a new soul? So many times, I saw the people around me choose suffering. I made a lot of idiotic choices in my life, but I never chose suffering. I graduated from suffering to sadness, and now I’m trying to graduate to compassion.

        Wisdom means seeing suffering coming and trying to get out of its way. It’s not always possible, and sometimes we just have to blast through it.

        A lot of my poems and stories are about ghosts. Ghosts describe the edge between the comprehensible and the impossible, between sadness and suffering, between guilt and gratitude.

        The deaths of pets are always traumatic for children, and I could even participate in the sadness of roadkill. I once tried to carry our cat Beautiful out to the road to see a dead cat, but, being an old soul, she did not want to come.

        When our family moved to Africa, I was eleven and had to leave our dog Four-Eyes, behind. I was haunted by his eyes for years and years. Every time I read the book The Cat That Went to Heaven I was in floods of tears.

        I asked a wise old man if animals went to heaven and he said, “Think how disappointed St. Francis would be if they don’t.” With a gush of relief I realized he was right – that wouldn’t be heaven for St. Francis. Or me.

        STICKS

        My dog
        Went on fetching sticks
        Long after it was dead.
        We’d find them on the stoop
        Arranged in patterns.
        Monk would sigh and say
        Poor old Four-Eyes
        Missing us. Still
        Playing people games

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

        The Sun – Truth –

          High school for me was a religious boarding school whose faculty asserted their monopoly on truth. I considered myself an honorable person and despised lies. So when asked straightforward questions, I told the truth and accepted my punishment. However, I gradually discovered that they reserved the right to lie to us and in fact, considered that “parental” and pedagogical. Was there any point telling “the truth” to such people? Apparently, truth was a scarce resource that I, at age 14, possessed. The hypocrisy was huge. My father loved the Society of Friends because creed was optional, attendance at meeting was voluntary and silent. No one spoke unless moved by the Holy Spirit. But at our school, religious attendance (we even had Vespers!) was mandatory and our captive audience was lectured from the Facing Bench (where the Important People sit.)

          In such a world, is truth possible? Is it even findable? Above all, is it communicable? I was naturally artistic, a bent which was discouraged because it was “self-indulgent”. And poetry (it’s poetry if the poet says it is) is the most self-indulgent of all. So that’s what I chose.

          PREPPY

          Corseted with verbs
          The French teacher sweeps
          The cherry blossoms from the tennis court
          As she would like to sweep
          The cherries, squelching them soundly
          Beneath soccer-spiked shoes

          While the headmistress
          Cello-breasted
          Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin
          In Chaucerian High English
          And the girls –
          Nun-white, nun-blue

          Soar above hockey fields like
          Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked
          In narrow hope chests ripened on
          Amphetamines
          Free Love
          Bad dreams.

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

          The MOON – Influence –

            In the life of a warrior, Models and Mentors are key. Whose coping mechanisms and vision of reality do you use to sustain you through tough times. When I was young, TV viewing was an event – not an influence. Reading was the most powerful influence, ever since I tackled My Father’s Dragon with its beautiful Henri Rousseau-like illustrations. What could they mean? I was determined to learn to read.

            I entered books through illustrations, which I puzzled over long and hard. Egyptian tomb paintings. Imaginative depictions of the city of Troy. Nineteenth century pirates battled with Narnians for control of my dreams. I worked my way through world fairy tales and a bowdlerized Thousand and One Nights.

            On summer vacation we read a book aloud; the Travels of Jamie McPheeters is the one I specially remember – I was horrified by its depiction of Indians eating puppies.

            Summers we were allowed to buy books to take with us on the boat, and we read each other’s books. That’s how I discovered my sister’s favorite, Nancy Drew, and I was immediately galvanized. Here was literature as aspiration – more intimate than a hero’s tale or an imaginary quest; specifically designed to appeal to the yearnings of an artistically underserved group, it depicted and ennobled a female snoop and an empowered teenager – someone you identify with and actually imagine becoming. Nancy Drew was certainly someone I very much wanted to emulate and in my own small way, I believe I have.

            I once shocked at group of literati debating what protagonist of literature one would choose to be by saying in was Nancy Drew, hands down. No contest. She’s constantly solving puzzles, having adventures and joyriding with her friends. Although she’s been physically threatened, her bodily autonomy and integrity is never in doubt. Over the years, I haven’t managed as much joyriding as I’d like but I’ve solved a LOT of puzzles, adventured much, and been very lucky.

            Boss Detective

            Nobody listens
            To the teenage girl
            Or notices her either
            Pawing through receipts
            Inspecting medicine cabinets
            Snooping in the garage –
            Is that weedkiller
            Paint thinner or
            Vanishing cream –
            Keys to the attic, cellar or
            Deepest basement of
            The self?

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

            Dreams & Imagination

            Children can’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s imaginary. Neither can artists, because Mind Power is the only game in town. Classic Comics put out wonderfully evocative, absorbing versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures – The Black Arrow, Kidnapped and Treasure Island. His stories have psychological questions about who’s worthy of trust and who’s a victimizer that affect me powerfully to this day.

            I wrote and illustrated a story – Poor Left Out Harry – that my parents noisily admired and showed to all their friends. Someone sent it to a publisher (we never got it back.) I was very surprised by this because I intended it as a joke and was much more psychologically involved in making up new worlds, copying Narnia, in a complex mapmaking game my sister and I invented called Scrambles & Rocks. But then, as now, Officianados want you to “write what you know”, and as third daughter, I was uncomfortably familiar with being left out of things. I learned if you want to write about what interests YOU, you’re going to have to Resist adult promotion.

            #Haiku: Re-Cognition

            Confront
            Contemptible
            Quotidian
            Skewed,
            Re-Ignite. You’re
            Welcome

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

            Ambivalence –

            I like to work but I definitely understand the procrastination people. Is there anything more painful than our efforts never matching our imagination? YES, the horrible realization that all our ideas are BAD. But there’s something even more painful than that – having NO ideas. With such a fraught future awaiting isn’t it better to just exist – even if interminably – on the precipice of Hope? But that way lies FRUSTRATION and that’s the most horrible emotion of all. You’re all blocked up – can’t express yourself. And you know the person blocking you is YOU so there’s self-hatred and hopelessness, too.

            Let me introduce you to the pleasures of being a Warrior. Warriors aren’t looking for perfection – not only is that impossible – it’s a waste of all this excellent musculature we’ve been training forever and ever. Warriors are about Process ie. Battles. It’s one battle after another, guys. Do Warriors yearn to retire? NO. We want to WIN. We’re going to eliminate that Frustration by finding a way around it. We’re going to educate ourselves about our latest bedevilment and we are going to conquer it.

            I saw the great mime Marcel Marceau perform his famous piece about escaping a cage. Then he finds a cage outside that and one outside THAT and on and on. That’s life, folks. The way I’ve come to terms with it is by choosing Eternity. If you have Eternity on your side, you can accomplish anything. According to Blaise Pascal (1600’s) all you have to do is compare the benefits of life with Belief (meaning, comfort & hope) to the benefits of life without (you’re not responsible to anyone or for anyone!) Freedom from superstition would be a possible argument if non-believers were actually free from superstition but no one is. Superstition just transmutes itself into a different form, so it probably is endemic to the human brain. Warriors must be free of superstition – we mapmakers glory in Reality.

            #Haiku: Warrior Courage

            Terrifying
            Ascent
            Leads to
            Breathtaking view of
            Eternity

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

            Duality

            Have you ever both wanted something and not wanted it? Of course you have. It’s the human condition. We often choose something temporary, hoping to dodge the consequences. Or we tolerate something to get a certain outcome, and when we’re denied that, we feel cheated.

            My duality is the desire to reveal myself and also be private. I want both things at once – to be completely known and to be utterly unknown.

            I already have two superpowers (Art & Love) but if I could get a third (seems unlikely) I would choose Invisibility. I love eavesdropping on conversations.

            These aspects of myself have certainly frustrated incredulous friends, boyfriends, managers and agents.

            I was very uncomfortable in the theatre, speaking and acting other people’s words, but I think (though I never got the chance) that acting my own words would have felt even worse.

            I could never express to family and friends the enormous relief it was to dance – utterly silent – in the spotlight –to my own moods – which you couldn’t dignify as “choreography”. Being almost nude didn’t bother me at all but felt absolutely right, since clothes & costumes were an impediment to which the performer must be mindful.

            I became a Warrior trying to explain these anomalies to people. Welcome to duality – the other edge we walk.

            Centering

            Dance is holy expression

            A centering, before

            The explosion

            Tuning to ancient volcanos

            Pre-dating the planet

            Performing with magma

            Shooting like footlights

            Re-shaping everything

            Selfhood and sainthood

            Willingly abandoned.

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

            Dissonance –

            Dissonance is created by facts that make each other impossible. They simply can’t both be true.
            Most people are made so uncomfortable by dissonance they pretend it doesn’t exist. But dissonance is the line that artists – and warriors – learn to walk.
            When I was little my first dissonant discovery was that highly desired things seemed to melt in my arms – I wanted getting them, but I didn’t want having them. The next dissonance was people saying they loved you but fleeing. I decided this dissonance was connected to the first; people like the idea of something much more than they like its reality. This was my first introduction to the importance of ideas.
            My warrior self began to emerge when I observed that people made elaborate rationales to retroactively justify their behavior and they wanted me to sign on to these. I thought it was easier to just admit that emotional states are fleeting – the pursuit of knowledge shows us that knowledge itself is amorphous, but discovered that my ideas were unpopular to say the least. In the meantime I wanted to strengthen my shell and explore ecstatic states. Looking at the past and trying to figure out what actually happened – turns out to be the most ecstatic state of all.

            Bird of Paradise

            I have seen the


            Souls caved in-


            Flashing hyaline –


            Wings upflung


            Tesserae shagreen;


            A flare-tailed phoenix


            Shuddering-


            Rip the orchid-breasted


            Dream


            Blood & lung –


            Incinerating


            Coils of lies


            Where love & truth –


            Diamorphate –


            Polychromize

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

            The Shadow –

            Is there justice…or not? The Shadow says there isn’t. The Shadow passes over us, enervatingly, sapping our vitals, suggesting, “What’s the use?” If Jesus is right and “By their fruits you shall judge them” then the Shadow’s apparent desire is that we lose hope and focus and accomplish nothing.

            This is such a devastatingly undesirable outcome it is obvious that the Shadow is to be resisted with all our strength. Warriors reject The Shadow.

            But Jesus also says, “Resist not evil” because evil wants you to play with it. How resist non-forcefully?

            I would say through the exercise of our creative – i.e. positive – gifts. This is why I study evil, tease it, laugh at it, explicate it.

            The Gruesome Gourmet

            My mother loved corpses


            Folded in with the custard; she


            Smoked out the kitchen like a witch


            In Macbeth.


            Taylor’s Toxicology shared shelf with


            Julia Child; Mom often


            Talked Trotsky over


            Soft-boiled eggs. She


            Smeared more Mercurochrome


            Than was strictly necessary


            On juvenile cuts; dabbed with dilated pupils like


            An artist in mayhem or an MGM makeup man


            While Dad ate mute


            Pacifist chili from cans in his room


            Re-reading KonTiki.


            I became vegetarian.


            It’s true what they say about


            Becoming your past;


            When I hear “Lizzie Borden”


            I remember –


            I think of mutton for breakfast in


            Sticky red sauce.

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

            Dormancy –

            Artists spend a lot of time trying to find and develop their unique voice. Purveyors of art want you to copy first – so they can compare it to something they already sell – and put a unique – but not TOO unique – touch on it later.

            These contrasting mandates send the artist down a lot of rabbit holes with no rabbits at the end.

            Before I discovered True Crime my own work annoyed me with its amorphousness. I could not figure out where my sense of doom was coming from. Everyone around me just assumed I was being fashionably angsty. You know! Modern megrims!

            But then I attended the Beth Carpenter trial for capital murder in New London, CT in 2002. The guilty were paraded before us – the hitman, the girlfriend, the coked-up lawyer, the hitman’s son. Frozen in the press gallery (my husband was covering it) our eyes boggled. American law gave the story shape – defense attorneys battled right in front of us with the prosecution bar. The jury, invisible on TV, sat before us dressed as if attending sporting event. Which this was – the outcome in question right up to the end.

            This was thrilling modern theatre – the view (the harbor was visible from the courthouse), the company (Press World), even the food was good – we tried a different restaurant every day (once the jury treated us to an Italian meal.)

            I became an addict of Court TV, segueing to the ID channel (where I appeared on Blood Relatives in 2014.) I began reading the true crime greats of which, it turns out, there are many. A novel I had been struggling with – Model Prisoner (which could have described me) was freed into becoming Woman Into Wolf. I based Find Courtney on 2 famous cases.

            LIZZIE BORDEN:
            “Not I But the Moon”…

            Not I but the moon

            Decrees each loss of blood

            You confided slyly, Besom-Breast!

            I’ll crochet a horsehair head for you and

            Lacework- stitch your flesh, my darling

            You and Scrimshaw Pate – He

            Who Must Know Better.

            Hot wax outlines a new broom’s sweep in

            Sacred dust: chorus of shoe-buttons popping like

            Potato-eyes. Oh, I shall dine on you

            My darlings, rolling you in

            Pig viands, I dredge your souls in

            Righteous lard. I am the sanctified enemy

            Of the paper cut people:

            My hymn shall rock

            The laughing house.