Alysse Aallyn

Category: Confessions

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

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      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

      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

      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.

    5. 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.

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

      RISK

      What looked like stupidity was only my determination. First I had a determination to get married, then when I discovered my husband was a casual liar (he lied to everybody) I was determined to get rid of my husband. He wanted to travel – I didn’t – I said “goodbye” and divided the assets. He always thought I would change my mind (though he never changed his behavior) and was surprised when I didn’t.

      But Warriors are honest. Warriors are loyal. Warriors are committed to finding the truth and living in its light. So obviously I needed to find another Warrior.

      Grounds for Divorce

      I wanted the house, you

      Didn’t; simple as that.

      I liked the way the roof

      Lost battle to the windows

      You saw decay

      But then I’m always tempted

      By the portents that you fear.

      Decay is just

      Another form of growth. You

      Cultivated virgins; unlike me

      Whose scars are

      Deepening daily

      like my eyes,

      harden like my body, sheltering

      soul-spores readying

      for flight.

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

      Danger

      Antioch Columbia decided it didn’t give grades, a fact my father, who was paying for it, found unsettling. They also told me if I wanted a class on Women’s Lit I would have to teach it myself. I could handle that, what I couldn’t handle was my writing teacher’s outspoken preference for and devotion to Bruce Vill. He ‘writes like an angel,” she said. He was also a successful musician and disturbingly handsome. Horribly, I married him. But nothing shapes a warrior like suddenly finding herself in the wrong camp.

      Your Sideways Smile

      I heard you singing and remembered

      All the things that you’ve forgotten.

      I see you clearly like

      A fish in a hailstone.

      See your hands, so

      Long for a man I always thought

      And your upper lip too short

      Like a lion’s in fact

      You have an animal presence

      Placing no trust in words

      No trust in love

      Acting after marriage like

      We’d never met –

      Creating islands undiscovered in

      Worlds unreachable.

      You were the joke

      I didn’t get;

      Blowing your smoke endlessly

      Between us

      Refusing to forget or

      Forgive that essential fragility

      Marking us human;

      Fated as you were

      Always to surrender

      To the scornful cries of your

      Invisible hecklers.

    8. 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.

    9. Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

      Serendipity –

      People often translate “serendipity” as “luck” – highly desirable and a very rare commodity. I think it translates better as “surprise” – equally desirable and much more common. It’s easy to imagine yourself into a modality where everything’s a surprise – as it is for a three year old or a friendly and excitable dog.

      Warriors enjoy surprise. We ride its drafts, like a hawk aboard breezes. Seen this way, all life becomes a joy.

      Art is built on a framework of serendipity and so are warriors. The idea is to take advantage of what’s around, use your imagination to aggregate seemingly unconnected objects/ideas and shepherd them into usable, satisfying and constructive formats. Usable for what? To get where you’re trying to go. Natch. Share the surprise.

      The “warrior” ethos first emerges when we bump up against the “forces” trying to block us. What are these forces? Sometimes individual people, but more usually combinations of people, working together to pound you into a shape for their purposes, not for yours. They’re not interested in imagination and surprise, but in coercion and control. It doesn’t take much observation to uncover their conviction that all resources and power belong to them, and you should cooperate with that. Why? The pay-off is mutable and unclear, but the punishments are stark and immediate.

      Warriors become wily. Serendipity itself – its recognition, use & joy – all in our corner. Their side is having a miserable time and they have to crank up the addictions to get through it.
      We, on the other hand, are finding invisible breezes. And riding them.

      Disappearing Act

      First, my sister and I ran together

      Then she disappeared.

      The baby was too young to run

      I regarded her speculatively:

      Would she ever be ready?

      Better go on alone

      Braving the night’s reaches

      Breasting the sunrise

      Singing to myself and

      When I get home

      Writing the music down.