Alysse Aallyn

Category: #BestRevenge

  • Queen of Swords – the Tarot Play by Alysse Aallyn

    CHARACTERS (4)
    Charmayne: a beautiful, powerful woman just at the drop off point into middle age
    Whitney: a stubborn, determined girl on the cusp of adulthood who doesn’t give a damn about her looks
    Eight: mysterious male beachcomber, late 20’s
    The Guardians of the Past: (can be played by a single actor)
    Dr Quantreau: elderly male in fishing regalia
    Mrs. Preece: bug-eyed, spry, elderly woman
    Mr. Butterbatch: an old man leaning on his broom; a fount of knowledge
    Mrs. Davish: motherly, grave-tending woman

    SCENES:

    1. A “beach cottage” exterior in the Hamptons & beach
    2. The basement “stacks” of a community college library
    3. Hamptons beach
    4. Empty strip club “Guilty Pleasures” in the early morning
    5. Hamptons
    6. Dead Lake Cemetery

      • SCENE 1
        (Morning. The seaside. Corner of a Hamptons-type “cottage”, boulder, hammock, patio set, easy chair, beachplum. WHITNEY forcefully banging on the door.)

      • WHITNEY
        This is MY story and she DOESN’T get to tell it! Charmayne!! Charmayne!!

      • (Through the French windows above the front door we see a man and a woman waltzing together. CHARMAYNE, expensively dressed for glittering “sport” opens the doors and leans out over the balcony. Man hovers in background. All we can see of him is his lithe figure, a glitter of gold necklaces and a shirt open to the navel. )

      • CHARMAYNE
        Go away little Whitney. Can’t you see its time for my fencing lesson?

      • (Making cha-cha moves)

      • WHITNEY
        Is that what you call it?

      • CHARMAYNE
        That’s what everyone calls it. You’d do well to engage in a little exercise plan of your own.

      • (WHITNEY resumes hammering on door which CHARMAYNE eventually opens carrying a pair of old-fashioned sabers, one in each hand. Door closes behind so WHITNEY can’t see in)

      • CHARMAYNE
        (Swinging the swords in her hands)

      • Really, Whitney. Hasn’t anyone ever told you how unattractive it is to make a pest out of yourself?

      • WHITNEY
        Why can’t I go in?

      • CHARMAYNE
        (Briskly)
        Because it’s my house now, Whitney. I don’t want you to see it till it’s done. It’s going to be a work of art. This morning I had the carpet men; this afternoon I had the drapery men, and this evening…(sniffs the air)

      • WHITNEY
        That’s a lot of men.

      • CHARMAYNE
        One shouldn’t be afraid of these things, Whitney. And this evening… Who knows what the evening holds? En garde!

      • (She treats WHITNEY to a frightening display of swordswomanship. WHITNEY tries to remain calm)

      • WHITNEY
        I didn’t come to see your games.

      • CHARMAYNE
        These aren’t games, poor little Whitney, these are the skills of life. Look! I’ll show you a few moves!

      • (Tosses a saber at WHITNEY who ducks – it clatters away.)
        Oh, Whitney, you’re no fun. You really need to step more boldly in the world.

    WHITNEY
    (A little sad, childishly punctured. She’s easy game)


    I’m here, aren’t I? I like fishing. And skeet shooting.


    CHARMAYNE
    Both of those can be done from an easy chair! Where’s the challenge in that? Why not crouch in a dark basement under a garden hose waiting for rats to skitter past if that’s all you’re going to do.


    WHITNEY
    Seriously, when am I going to see inside? I just wondered…you know, about the family things…


    CHARMAYNE
    There are no family things I like everything new. Antiques are a fraud perpetrated on the unwary. Don’t you remember we agreed you’d give me twenty-four hours notice before showing up?


    WHITNEY
    I doubt we ever agreed about anything.


    CHARMAYNE
    I’m afraid your lack of planning doesn’t constitute my emergency.


    WHITNEY
    I’m giving you twenty-four hours notice now, then.


    CHARMAYNE
    I’m so sorry, no can do tomorrow. How about Thursday?


    WHITNEY
    (Like she’s never heard of it)


    Thursday!!


    CHARMAYNE
    (Silky)


    Do try to squeeze it in. Young people fetishize spontaneity. When you’re all grown up I’m sure you’ll realize everything worth having comes through careful planning. Shall we say “tea?” Cinq à sept is my favorite hour. Ta ta, then.


    (Disappears without waiting for the response.)

  • The Crimes of Woody Allen – a film review by Alysse Aallyn

    THE CRIMES OF WOODY ALLEN

    This film, probably his last, is not the movie to rescue the 88 year old filmmaker but it certainly marks an advance in his artistic life. Throughout his career, Allen has leveraged an apparently traumatically low self-esteem, inviting us to laugh at the hoops society forces ordinarily inadequate people to jump through for admiration, employment, companionship & love.

    As he matured, he began implying that society itself is a crime and we are its victims (Shadow & Fog, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Hollywood Ending, Match Point, Broadway Danny Rose, Cassandra’s Dream, Interiors, Irrational Man, Scoop, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway.)

    I’ve come to believe he’s our Marcel Proust – sharply attuned to the pathos and ambition of our social signaling and teasing us with scandalous gossip about how far some of us might be willing to take our desperate impostures. What will we do to get what we want and what might we do when challenged?

    Throughout his career, he has presented beautiful young women as the ultimate desirable acquisition of the good life; otherworldly angels whose psyches are completely closed to him, but whose bodies he hopes to subjugate.

    Coup de Chance offers one of these mysterious creatures as its protagonist, a beautiful gallery worker “rescued” from her life with a shiftless musician by a wealthy, jealous man terrified of losing her. Yet she is bored, bored, BORED by his dull existence of object acquisition and gourmet travel and secretly falls for a handsome, exciting young man with a head full of dreams.

    This film was banned from Cannes as a show of solidarity with the credible accusations of sexual impropriety by Allen’s daughter, whose story as an adult and a child, has never varied. The persona who comes across in Allen’s stories is inquisitive and clueless and needy enough to have done what he is accused of, yet most of us will never know the truth. Creator of his own worst fears, he triggered their realization. “Exposed”, discredited and cast out; still he is making films.

    Artists we can unreservedly admire as human beings are rare, Picasso and Tolstoy and Byron, for example, displayed outrageously cruel, downright illegal behavior for all to see. But it’s quite possible that the sinner’s story is always the more interesting one from the perspective of our own humdrum lives. Certainly no one knows crime as intimately as a criminal.

    Unlike the brilliant Match Point, the intensely immersive Cassandra’s Dream, the creepy Crimes & Misdemeanors and the tour de force Irrational Man, Coup de Chance’s plot is a mere story board, lacking the three-dimensional richness this collaborative art usually supplies, but it closes with Allen’s final gift to us, the end philosophy of his lifetime of restless questing. His last word? That each of us is a lucky miracle and that life itself is a miracle we must learn to revel in and appreciate.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE IV – THE LAST SCENE

    EVA
    I am gnawed by an aching hopeless wish.
    Loneliness leads to breakdown,
    Becomes dementia. I batter
    Around the rooms of this castle,
    However brightly-plumaged,
    Knocking into furniture,
    A tragic bird who’s trapped indoors.
    Even dizzy with drink I maintain the frigidity
    Of an Edwardian hostess
    Intolerant of scenes at meals.
    Without you life’s a half-lit room.

    EVAN
    I’ve become a character in your melodrama
    An absurd creature of romantic vice.
    Hopeless dilemma.

    EVA
    What could be more beautiful than our ten days in New York,
    Walking among the perverted architecture.
    No loss of illusion, rather an increase.
    I’m in the midst of a dreary financial crisis,
    Having breakdown on my feet.
    I hope I don’t sound too shocked and sad.
    You are life to me as nothing is.
    My fingers still tremble,
    Touching you after 17 years.

    EVAN
    This is the Eva I first met, first knew, first loved.
    We waited it out and didn’t lose each other.
    I was sane or mad to doubt you & myself.
    We are like two people sweating blood
    I feel further from you than ever. I dread losing you
    But Elayna’s power still holds me.
    I fear I may do one of you harm.

    EVA
    Thanks for the money,
    I hope it doesn’t embarrass you too much.
    You are a reviver and a balm.
    We must be in Paris together before we die.

    EVAN
    If you want me to be unselfish, let me be unselfish.
    You are my greatest friend. I’m
    Trying to keep off the drink while you’re here,
    Otherwise I know I’ll wreck everything.
    Three manhattans makes me crazy.
    Your feverish cheer does not seem solid.
    Is this the wreckage of our love?
    Once frightened of your clinical eye
    Now I’m more frightened of my own.
    I’ve matriculated in
    Your fearful university.

    EVA
    We sheer away in horror
    Scenting fumes of evil
    As we lose control.
    Defeat and exhaustion, alarm and despondency.
    Demoralized and sad.
    Slam down the lid on pain and resentment:
    I have taken against your family.
    Let’s dance. To sit
    In silence denigrates our love.

    EVAN
    My heart aches for you.
    We talked for the first time in weeks
    About hurt and resentment.
    I could manage my life if it weren’t for you
    And you could manage yours if it weren’t for me.
    You infect me with your despair and I flee to my wife
    To release the pressure.
    Her quickening influence works my imagination.

    EVA
    I hate that you are in New York without me.
    You pervade that place as God pervades our hearts.
    My life is based on my assumption
    Of togetherness and my
    Secret fear you’re being got at
    When we could be snug together.
    I obsess that you’re in places where I’m not.
    I could not live without seeing you.
    I dread our visit may turn sour.

    EVAN
    Everything except your beautiful self rusts
    Or dies or goes away.
    My love only seems dead;
    it’s alive underneath. If you die
    I shall never forgive you
    We need ideas that are less about ourselves.

    EVAN
    I hurt Elayna tonight
    But there’s no help for it.
    She cares for me and I only care for a life apart.
    A clean break, an amputation
    Makes me frantic and guilty.
    She says we have a happy marriage only because
    She willed it. This smell of death and decay
    Makes me long for sex.
    Could you help me find a girl – any girl you choose –
    Or will you call me a sex mad degenerate?
    Panic makes my hands shake.
    I thought of Elayna and I wept.

    EVA
    I received your sad, wild letter.
    I accept that you can’t free yourself.
    Do you accept it?
    I feel so very near you.
    I accept that you make sex
    Desperately with strangers –
    Do you accept it?
    Can anyone love such a cold-blooded person?

    EVAN
    How silly I am, I thought
    I was reconciled to our ending,
    Expected a falling off of tension & illusion.
    But it’s a prospect I can’t face.

    EVA
    Miracles happen but
    The gift of love causes guilt & pain.

    EVAN
    I am utterly becalmed.
    What I dread most is silence,
    The latest form of impotence.
    I need stringing up and tautening.
    Revenge on love. Revenge on me.

    EVA
    I am suffused with love because I am free.
    My work becomes our child,
    An extension of us. Immortal. Still,
    Something vanishes when you’re not there.

    EVAN
    Elayna broke her hip.
    How irreplaceable she is to me.
    Our brand of married happiness is entirely unsung.
    I shrink to leave her even for a day.

    EVA
    I’m sorry it’s not fatal.
    Am I dispensable to you?
    You love no one. If you turn against me
    I’ll die in a week because
    I have no one looking after me.

    EVAN
    Turn against you! Agonizing!
    In spite of the hangover of humiliation
    I broke down all reserves so we could be together.
    A very happy day and I was sorry to leave you.

    EVA
    Wed & sad.
    Past distress is muffled by age & habit.
    Today we meet formally as if at a garden party.
    A promise unfulfilled.

    EVAN
    You looked so ill
    I was nagged by fear I bored you.
    I long for the happiness of old age,
    Guilt free, pain free, fear free.
    In your silence
    I feel your calming hand.

    EVA
    I invited Elayna to lunch.

    EVAN
    I am not best pleased.
    The day you come to like each other
    Our love will die. It will be
    Poison to our love.
    Elayna rarely admits depression.
    I have had not just love but loyalty.
    Your ghost will haunt me till I die.
    You force ruthlessness.
    It is a good thing your throat is sore
    Or you would never stop talking.

    EVA
    Are you sending me your signet ring?
    I want something solid to remember you
    As I dodge death, fight off this
    Paralyzing loneliness.
    Our last communion.

    (EVA fades away. EVAN is alone.)

    EVAN
    Is the flaw in love a flaw in me?
    I never should have married.
    My heart jumps with pain like a hooked fish.
    I am rudderless. Upon your death
    My ring comes back,
    All your contrivances revealed.
    Now you are gone, I find you everywhere.
    We will never see each other again;
    Never, never, never.
    You are gone from me forever.
    I walk the streets and weep.
    Is this delayed shock? Boredom or despair?
    I will never cease to feel this pain till
    I cease feeling anything.
    For the last three nights, I dreamed of you.
    Did I anger you, neglect you?
    It’s too late to pray –
    I await your final book with horror.
    I need to know I was your life.
    Please
    Come back one last time to tell me
    Just for an hour.
    If you ever thought you loved more than I
    You are revenged.

    THE END

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE III

    EVAN
    This is the letter I would write you if I dared,
    if I weren’t frightened bf the cancer
    Of your Elayna-hatred.
    I am overworked, wrung out.
    I feel possessed by you.
    You must always live at the pitch of anguish.
    Our love has roots in good and evil,
    It lives in the darkest places of our natures
    Despite of its pleasant surface.
    Shall we end by destroying each other?
    You have the deadlier weapons.

    EVA
    I have a bad effect on people.
    Guilt, conspiracy, love,
    I cannot breathe without them.
    Oh, the pain of your reproach!
    Not seeing you would kill me.
    I live for the memory of our every moment.
    I wouldn’t give a damn if I had a month to live.

    EVAN
    Boredom, dissipation, remorse,
    And apprehension– I can’t escape this obsessive cycle.
    Beneath the controlled surface of my mind
    Opportunities to be frenzied are endless.
    I’m afraid of saying something evil which many stick.

    EVA
    Gratitude for our happiness chokes me.
    This restlessness of things going to waste.
    Missing you is like an illness.
    I have never fallen out of love with you.
    The flame is always there.
    The place is full of you.
    I can no longer look at hyacinths

    EVAN
    There’s a worm in this bud
    But who is its corruptor?
    Your insights are so powerful they alter mine.
    I’m sorry for your husband’s death.
    I feel a shift in the angle of vision.
    A sadness fell on me
    A foreboding so final it seemed the end.
    Your pleading for our life dissolved my will.
    I agree to renewal, something I can live by
    But I refuse your guilt.

    EVA
    Did I leave my diary behind?
    Don’t read it, not that you would.
    It’s anaphrodisiac. I am filled with envious admiration
    For the way you spend your time.
    You get so much done!

    EVAN
    Of course, it’s an incentive to work, being alone.
    You have created your own circle
    Even if the intelligentsia is as insensitive as you say.
    I’m grateful we are calm,
    Those fearful scenes never likely to begin again.
    I’m sure the panic of youth has played a part.
    I used to hope you would love me less over time
    But now I think we love each other equally.

    EVA
    I believe we should exchange rings.
    Do you think this faux? Would Elayna object?
    This is so I have something in case you die of that itch or fall out of an airplane.
    I wonder why Elayna’s throat won’t heal?
    I believe she is ice-bound.
    She’s sealing you away from life.

    EVAN
    You witch, you have
    Frozen Elayna’s throat.
    I begged you not to. You make
    Sadness physical.

    EVA
    Elayna’s frozen her own throat
    I wish you’d see it.
    Depression is hallucinatory.
    Guilt and sorrow undermine all confidence,
    I refuse to give them credence.

    You are so near me I feel we are one person.
    I feel you now beside me.
    I will make you real.

    EVAN
    These acute waves of feeling sometimes come over me
    As if you’re signaling.
    I owe you happiness
    But I can’t express it.
    We must always believe life is as beautiful as the music
    Says it is. The illusions you must cultivate are in fact
    A form of courage.
    Forget my deficiencies
    Find amusement in the worldly game.

    EVA
    Without Allen, I re-experience my youth.
    Oh, the bafflement of the young!
    I broke off my engagement because I loved too much
    And cast about for a spouse I could
    Control. I believe you did that, too.

    EVAN
    Our parting was unbearable.
    I had to run away –
    Your rush of talk was like someone bursting into tears.
    I feel like an executioner robbing you of sleep.
    My nose began to bleed and
    It’s been bleeding ever since.
    We must love each other less to become more tranquil.

    EVA
    I am a witch and you should fear me.
    I glow with contempt and boredom and fury.
    I don’t understand why
    I can’t experience life by your side.
    We share the same senses,
    The same vein of joy.
    Our life together is timeless, continuous.

    EVAN
    Your letter’s fraught with dynamite.
    I can never be alone, it is me and the gin bottle.
    I am home nowhere now – except with you.

    EVA
    I don’t want you getting yourself into a state
    But Edgar has proposed, forcing me to face the fact
    That I literally cannot live without you.

    EVAN
    I dread you will fall for Edgar.
    You called him “sweet” and “cozy” and “brilliantly entertaining”
    And I am none of those things. Did you bewitch him?
    he said in a persecuted voice.
    It would your justice, sending me to hell.
    We would lose each other by inches,
    But aren’t we doing that already?

    EVA
    I can’t show Edgar the brutal candor
    Behind my loving kindness.
    He mistakes the hostess for a person.
    I arrange the flowers in symbols of you
    And everyone’s too stupid to notice.
    To bed alone again tonight.
    I wish Elayna would die.
    Then we should be equals.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for 2 voices by Alysse Aallyn

    SCENE II

    EVAN
    Do you really love me?
    Why should you?
    I don’t seem any longer
    To be able to cope with friendships.

    EVA
    It is a horror, an outrage
    That we should not be here together. I struggle against
    The wound of not knowing where you are each minute.
    Everything you do is more important to me than my own life.
    The whole of me is with you.
    I see and feel you so distinctly,
    your beloved cold hand in mine
    Your touch on the nape of my neck.
    Both joy and agony
    – my insides torn by pincers.
    A double goodbye would have been awful
    – two bites on the bullet of pain.
    This love is like something we have given birth to.
    We must never blunt our imagination or tenderness.
    Don’t get a cold in your soul.

    EVAN
    I disappoint everyone.
    I deliberately left one of your letters for Elayna to find.
    With me love is linked with
    A need to betray. I invite possessiveness.
    She made me promise our love would never be physical.
    I lied fluidly.

    EVA
    Even the thought of
    Such a loss of pleasure tears at my heart
    Like some medieval torture.
    You harrow me unbearably.
    My defenses are down.
    I’m filled me with a sense of ghastly injury.
    How I wish I were more beautiful –
    It’s my mouth that ages me.
    I want you seeing all of me –
    Even if it hurts.
    You are your own child,
    You preserve your youth with the harm
    That you cause.
    I am dead and already
    Interred – in you.
    You are my eternity.

    EVAN
    You can’t have everything.
    I am kept aloft by the conflict of
    Unbearables.
    I am happy.

    EVA
    Our dancing life is over –
    Shall I enter a convent?
    There’s no point in being alive
    if we’re not together.
    I show my deepest self to you alone.

    EVAN
    Please – no more shaming conversations
    Over Irish whisky. Let’s cut our losses
    And get some fun from life.

    EVA

    
The gash in our love might close
    But I can’t forget it’s there.
    Life with you is a remote happiness to which I cling.

    EVAN
    And all this time you write
    Fantastic books. If you were as unhappy as you say,
    You couldn’t write so well.
    I am the whetstone on which you sharpen –
    I should be thanked for all your works.

    EVA
    You shed your light around me.
    I am always aware of that other world we share
    – Or do we? Our pattern seems set –
    If treachery can’t break it,
    There is no death.

    EVAN
    I am losing interest in sex.
    My bed gets so icy in the small hours of the morning –
    I feel I am trying to communicate with the spirit world.
    I am in limbo and will never escape this place.
    The adolescent remains alive in me, I have a
    Panic fear of conformity.
    So I cast myself as the elderly rake.
    I’m the bore –
    Marriage gets me down.

    EVA
    When you go on and on about yourself
    You’re a man I don’t recognize.
    I prefer your adolescent self.
    The man of the house is a free agent.
    A respected prowler
    Who looks benevolently upon the faces of his womenfolk.
    Then he’s away – with mistresses or boyfriends.
    In my attack of loneliness, I’m housebound,
    Eating baked beans and drinking stewed tea.

    EVAN
    In other countries women
    Are less bossy and more decorative.

  • The Demon Lover – a play for two voices by Alysse Aallyn

    Scene I

    EVAN

    I like women willful, late
    For appointments,
    fond of showy clothes and society, vague, drifting, dreamy,
    yet of course all of that is tiresome.
    But I don’t like competence, intellectual honesty, intelligent sensuality.
    Women keep turning on me saying,
    “You don’t love me.”
    What good is it to have been so happy
    when it ends so painfully?
    I am a “crook”, a “torturer of women”,
    “Murderer.” She has made me feel a monster.
    Below the surface of the will
    I feel deep animal distress, as if I had wives
    Hidden away somewhere
    To marry my present wife.

    EVA
    I find your misery gratifying.
    When I was younger I used to
    Accommodate everyone –
    Now I’m recalcitrant.
    You’re never out of my thoughts, but
    Sadness dulls one.
    Honestly, I always risk failing you,
    Failing you in outstandingness.
    You are extraordinary, I am extraordinary,
    we have been extraordinary together.
    We’re specimens under glass.
    It hurts because the pin runs through both of us.
    The agonizing force of missing you
    Is sweeping over me.
    We have eternity connecting us,
    Backward & forward but
    I can’t get anyone to believe it.

    EVAN
    Would my death simplify things?
    My wife struggles with carrying the conversation
    While I stare glumly at the rain.
    We go to an expensive little restaurant
    And pretend we are on a date to really talk.

    EVA
    That woman’s killing you.
    Imagine if you were dead and your wife
    Wrote a book explaining you
    To everyone! That’s true suffering –
    Fodder for the mealy-mouthed.

    EVAN
    My wife won’t be writing any books
    About me or about anything. You’re the one
    To write the book.
    I feel safe in your hands.

    EVA
    Except I’ve told you over and over
    You’ll outlive me.
    You’re killing me.
    Or your wife is.
    I’ll die of my addiction –
    We always do.
    We prefer it.
    Will you write about me?

    EVAN
    I’ve lied to everyone for
    So long, I’m sure that truth
    Is beyond me.

    EVA
    I’d rather see you dead at my feet
    Than dead ON your feet.
    That would be a mercy killing –
    The last unbearable agony –
    Wondering if you existed at all.
    I have small talent for this.
    I have disgraced my idealism,
    Pretending boredom can be fruitful.
    Waiting, waiting for you everywhere. I
    Wake one day to find I’ve lost my looks, my hair,
    fascination, brain – everything.

    EVAN
    You’re simply waking up
    In an empty hotel.
    The light is always different
    The morning after.
    This is what middle-aged people do.
    I love the brutality of your world.
    You never fade. You are my word made flesh.

    EVA
    You are my religion.
    Until In fell in love with you I was 25 inside.
    I lived in a world of dreams and theories.
    Your experiences seem realer to me than mine.

    EVAN
    To have touched the same places
    Is a bond between us.
    Social instinct is my religion.

    EVA
    Middle-aged people go to weddings
    Out of perverse fascination for the bride.
    I was that bride –
    My day was all champagne.
    Anaesthetized
    It doesn’t hurt so much.
    Such a sense of enormity came over me
    I almost fainted. I gave Allen the dirtiest look: “You caused this.”
    Without wedding dress
    I was a restless, dowdy snob.
    People were falling in love left and right –
    Even in decaying marriages.
    I wanted that –
    He read my subtext.
    And I was caught.

    EVAN
    These dreary parties have a decaying effect.
    My loneliness for you is like a whiplash.
    Your absence is a bitter injury
    But nothing can injure our love –
    We’re too strong for them.
    I’m silenced till I hear from you.
    If I let myself go I would feel desperate.
    I can’t bear you’re going to France without me –
    isn’t love our country?

    EVA
    I won’t say “I’ll die if you don’t come”
    Because I know you would come if you possibly could.
    What a skeleton in the cupboard a wife is.

    EVAN
    Don’t be jealous of Elayna. You are the only goal
    Toward which my life is tending.
    You are the meaning of my life.
    I could never live for work alone.

    EVA
    You enlarge my soul.
    In your mind is my existence.
    You’re more real to me than me.
    I’m in a peculiar psychic state.
    It’s an atmosphere of illusion.
    I envy Elayna all the time.
    It drips like an irritant over my nerves.

    EVAN
    What of Allen? You
    Have your worse half too.

    EVA
    Oh, Allen spends his time lost in woods,
    Falling in love with trees. He’s
    No threat to anyone.

    EVAN
    To understand one’s destiny
    One needs a framework for this mass of experience.
    How can I live separated from you?
    If I stopped caring for you
    I couldn’t care for anything.
    I need my wife, her whip-cracking organization.
    I loathe living in the squalor I get into on my own.
    Having breakfast OUT of bed is the last horror.
    Miasmic feelings of impossibility and terror. Help me.

    EVA
    We help each other
    By existing. Except for God I have no help but you.
    Our love is growing more formidable as our unshakeable belief
    Grows stronger. Like grace, it renews itself.
    All yesterday I glowed. My inability to accept your wife
    Is my deformity – help me with it.
    The light of our love is the only light for me.

  • Secrets of the Self – Second Book Contract by Alysse Aallyn

    My second book contract was a two-book contract. I had long been working on a novel, Model Prisoner, that was based largely on the true crime story described in Barthel’s Death in California , where a man murdered his best friend and kidnapped the friend’s wife. I was working through the issues created when women are forced to cooperate with dangerous men. As often happens, the characters hijacked the story. The relationship between the two men became more and more important – my poor heroine was just a marker of success or loss. In a lucky flash of intuition, I realized the mythic proportions of what I was dealing with – my protagonist became Persephone, uncomfortably contended over by two Lords of Darkness.

    Another character pushed his way onstage – Persey’s dog, Digger. Because Persey loved him, he was an object of jealousy by the Lords of Darkness, who wanted her all to themselves. This evoked the legends around domesticating wild creatures into household pets and the story became Woman Into Wolf.

    When I was ready to submit the novel I discovered my publisher Bridgeworks had been bought by another publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, so I sent it to them and prepared myself for the uncomfortable weeks long wait for consideration lowly authors are subjected to. A few weeks later I heard from my old editor (who I’d dedicated my second novel to!) that Rowman & Littlefield in fact had no editorial department, and so my contract was essentially null and void. I submitted Woman Into Wolf to my old editor to see if she had any good ideas about what I should do next. She suggested I de-emphasize one of the characters (the Bird Lady) and play down Persey’s past life – I took all her suggestions. But when I sent her the revised manuscript I discovered she had forgotten all about it and wanted me to tell her how the novel USED to be!

    At that point I lost faith in her. My trusty Girl Focus Group (my daughter’s friends) loved the book, and I feared further monkeying around might break something important! It seemed a better idea to jut publish the thing myself. And the reviews bore me out.

    …a thrill-ride, unique and highly recommended reading.” –Entrepreneur.com


    “deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment and a mother’s grief…as each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed I waited for the revelation to come…she couldn’t imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.” – MyShelf.com

    “one of the most unusual mysteries I have ever read…I loved reading Woman Into Wolf … kept me on the edge of my seat right through the end…I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime mysteries that also
    enjoy some extra spice in their stories.” – Readerviews.com

    “a very fine psychological thriller…
    the characters in this book are as bright
    as crystal and as sharp as shattered glass.
    Aallyn not only can describe them to a
    neo-noun, she can make them speak
    true to those characters.
    Quite a talent…a novel every bit as worthy as
    her first.” –ArmchairInterviews.com

    “Satisfying as hell.” – Quoth the Raven

  • Becoming a Warrior – The Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Thistle – Resistance:

    If This Card Chooses You – Armor up. It’s coming. Do you dream of battles? Are you feeling muzzled? Do you wake up angry? Worried? Afraid? Do you gnash your teeth while you sleep? Do you love proving others wrong? When others speak are you eager to jump in and “set them right”? Is your favorite word, “No?”

    Resistance is Never Futile – We become warriors for a reason. But what kind of warriors are we? After all, we can’t make our contribution unless we know who we are. Strangely, we get a lot of push-back on this seemingly basic investigation. First, there’s enormous cultural pressure against us defining ourselves as warlords compete, waging schemes to entrap us into fighting for them. It’s enough to gnash anyone’s teeth.

    Warrior Challenge – We must be protective of our special gifts. Specify under what circumstances you are relaxed, happy, creative and “In-Flow.” The ‘flow” state is “bliss” – your brain oozes alpha waves as you sink into some interesting exploration, losing any sense of time and feeling at one with the universe. Suddenly, we are experiencing the pleasures of “Eternity” while still very much a part of this sphere. Is “flow” achieved for you through music? Dance? Composition? Reading? Sex? Some lucky people access this state through meditation alone. It is certainly worth a try; meditation is very good for your brain.

    Warrior Danger – The danger of Eternal Resistance is that it becomes reflexive. Our Resistance must be chosen, carefully thought out and promoted by History and Fact.

    Warrior Opportunity – You are a work of art. Your whole life, your experiences, your very dreams, have brought you to this moment. Your resistance to invasion, to malformation, to co-option, to corruption, has blossomed into an individualized focus that must defeat their blander, blunter, self-serving opposition. You lose nothing – gain everything – by becoming yourself; a unique warrior nonpareil who has never existed before and will never exist again. You are the opposite of a faceless soldier, you are rare, sui generis, customized for this moment of space and time but perfected for eternity. What fears are left to surmount? What can you dream?

    Models & Mentors – ‘When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty” – Thomas Jefferson

    “Every moment of resistance to temptation is a victory” – Frederick William Faber

    “To fly we have to have resistance” – Maya Lin

    “The history of liberty is a history of resistance” – Woodrow Wilson

    “The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution the more resistance you will feel”

    – Steven Pressfield

    #Haiku: Counter-Pressure

    First –
    Relax;
    Melt;
    Slide;
    Upend
    Onslaught;
    Be attacker’s
    Banana peel

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Rose – Vulnerability:

    If This Card Chooses You – You wake up trembling. Are you helpless in your dreams? Do you dream of children, of your own childhood? In Warrior Oracle, the rose represents the soft evanescence of youth when the merest thumbprint of emphasis can leave eternal impressions. As the emblem of beauty, the Rose warns us that this quivering, temporary vulnerability may be the very definition of loveliness.

    Warriors Remain Vulnerable – We are human, and we have no desire to divest ourselves of our humanity. As warriors we defend youth, beauty, humanity, evanescence.

    We Remember Where We Came From – You well recollect how you were molded. Is it a pleasant nostalgic vision or a horror story? Do you resent all the other actors in this drama? Remember, resentment Is a poison we consume – we are the only ones it harms. Value Your Training – good and bad – as you value your humanity.

    Roses Have Thorns – Celebrate Yours – Everyone sees the thorn-stripped rose the florist sells, forgetting that roses were born with protections, just like the rest of us. Contemplate yours.

    Warriors Have Many Protections – Our training, Our Mental Agility, Our Commitments – But most especially our worldview. Others may surrender and fade away, but we know we are designed for eternal beauty, like the stars. It is the essence of life to struggle, to mentally picture the goal and to design and redesign a gorgeous, life-changing map for all who follow.

    Warrior Challenge – Can we turn the building blocks of our own past into a constructive, hopeful framework for the future? Can you mentally accept and explore the power of a hardening maturity?

    Warriors Preserve & Build – We do not destroy. The philosophy of “annihilation” Is a psychic snare. Terrible things happen to ordinary people and they are changed forever. We may wish those things hadn’t happened but regret prevents us from focusing on reality. We need to understand the world we’re in and map it for those who follow after. History and literature explore the coping mechanisms around disaster and the strong people it produces.

    Warrior Opportunity – Resilience is the art we cultivate. We soon realize resilience has its own beauty; this rose may be cut down but the plant is hardly dead, in fact it offers an outpouring of constant roses. That Is true beauty.

    Models & Mentors – “Vulnerability is the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy, and creativity” – Brene Brown

    “Being vulnerable is the only way to allow your heart to feel true pleasure” – Bob Marley

    “Sometimes you have to drop your guard so your heart can breathe” – Emma Xu

    “The strongest love is the love that can demonstrate its fragility” – Paulo Coelho

    #Haiku: On the Vulnerability of Poets

    Dis –
    Composing
    To re-see;
    Melting to
    Re-form;
    Masking to un –
    Mask.

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Ladyslipper – Singularity:

    If This Card Chooses You – Have you been running with the crowd too much? Feeling unappreciated, even exhausted? Are you waiting for someone to celebrate You? Maybe it’s time to celebrate yourself.

    Warriors Are Always Alone in the Crowd – Do you frequently find yourself walking in a different direction from everyone else? Do you often feel ganged up on, bullied? The Ladyslipper card represents all that Uniqueness out there, and because there are so many of us, that’s a lot of singularity! If you doubt that so much uniqueness could possibly exist, consider the humble snowflake.

    Each Warrior is Unique – We may be civilized into groups, but society only advances because of its singletons. Becoming a warrior means insisting on the right to make your own special contribution. Recognize how much the world needs you, and congratulate yourself for it.

    Warrior Danger – The powerful are only powerful because they have an army. They want you fighting for them, not for yourself. Consider your best interests. Armies PLAN to “use you up.”

    Warriors Will Not Be “Used” – Warriors train themselves to out-think people and situations. Confronting Narcissism is a real danger in our society. People are encouraged to perform, push themselves forward and try to harvest “likes” from absolute strangers by sheer outrageousness, rather than develop their real, immortal Self. Honoring your uniqueness begins in absolute privacy as you face your soul, contemplate your real self and consider pathways to strengthening these assets.

    Warrior Pride – Humility sharpens our edge and keeps us light on our feet. It’s never too late to change direction, especially when you find out you’ve been traveling the wrong way. Consult your maps and Training Journal. Time for a redesign?

    Warrior Opportunity – The warrior path is independent of criticism from those not making your journey. Critics wrestling for control won’t like that. We all need to consult different perspectives in order to check our placement and effectiveness but much criticism is sharpened to spike & derail. Recognize that the following techniques are attempts to harvest YOU and feed off your power and are designed to re-direct your effort to the critic’s own ends.

    Projection – Projection is a defense mechanism used to displace responsibility for one’s negative behaviors by attributing them to someone else. It acts as a digression that avoids ownership and accountability.

    Nonsensical Argument;- Big words, word salad, circular conversations, ad hominem arguments, projection and gaslighting are meant to disorient you and get you off track


    Blanket statements and generalizations –
    Misrepresenting your thoughts and feelings to the point of absurdity 
    Nitpicking and moving the goal posts 


    Abrupt changes of subject – you’ll NEVER win because they decide what’s “important”
    Covert and overt threats – “You’ll never-“ “No one will ever-“ they control mysterious armies and powers


    Name-calling – attempts to associate you with the publicly despicable


    Covert and overt put-downs – the critic’s superiority is thereby established

    Smear campaigns – behind your back


    Demands for loyalty – When someone stresses that you should “trust them” right away or emphasizes their inherent credibility, be wary.


    Baits and badgers you, trying to get an emotional reaction, all while feigning innocence


    Boundary testing – Trying to subvert your boundaries or disparage your triggers


    Aggressive jabs disguised as jokes 


    Condescending sarcasm and patronizing tone 


    Belittling, degrading. Shaming

    Warrior Freedom – Much human interaction is a subtle or unsubtle attempt to divide people into camps and to enlist you to carry someone else’s banner. But warriors own their own souls and battle for abstract principles of fairness and goodness, health and growth.

    Models & Mentors – “What sets you apart can feel like a burden, but it’s what makes you great” – Emma Stone

    “If you are always trying to be normal you will never know how amazing you can be”

    – Maya Angelou

    “Always remember you are absolutely unique, just like everyone else” – Margaret Mead

    “Be yourself – everyone else is already taken” – Oscar Wilde

    #Haiku: Conceptual Art Project

    Your life’s
    Hard-fought how-to guide:
    Unique –
    Personal;
    Willed:
    Transformative