Alysse Aallyn

Category: Confessions

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

    Dawn – Relief –

      After the birth of my first child I bought a printing press – an adorable little toy that printed a 3×5 inch page and elegant “Egyptian” type. I wanted to print my own book of poems – The Hot Skin – and I didn’t want to ”delegate” anything. I also bought a binding machine and designed the covers – plain black and white –by myself. The pleasure of not having to rely on other people was immensely freeing.

      I also bought a sorter in which to place the ordered printed pages, taped to it the slogan “Work Is Love Made Visible” (St. Catherine) and moved this whole conglomeration, plus the baby’s playpen, to the small cottage at StormFall Farm for a poetic summer in the Berkshires.

      My husband planned to commute back and forth from Philadelphia.

      I was determined to have the experience Virginia Woolf so movingly describes in her diaries – sorting type as a way to self-soothe.

      At the time I was staying in the cottage, my husband’s grandmother was up at the big house where I often went for drinks and dinner with her. This grandmother had always been wealthy but was a big believer in “noblesse oblige” and common sense. She was very shocked that I would sometimes alter one of my poems to suit my type requirements and told me, sadly, this meant I was not a real poet. I laughed out loud. This woman would not recognize Art if it bit her.

      When my husband arrived he was angry and aggrieved that I had dedicated the book to him, thanking him for helping with the baby. Didn’t I understand what an insult that was? What would people think? Who would want to invest their money with a baby-minder?

      I was gobsmacked. His violent hysteria was even more frightening than his arguments. My first husband was a cool, smooth seducer, accustomed to lying to get his way. My second husband was very different, but I was beginning to see that the rage and the pathos were deeper than I’d realized. But with poetry you can understand – and express – anything.

      IN THE BUTTERFLY PAVILION

      This evening you said you wished
      I was more ordinary.
      I bowed my head. I did not speak.
      Outside the animals leaned together,
      Breathing lightly; waiting
      For my answer.
      Cats-tongue ferns
      Swelled up like swords, pushed out a stink
      Occluding fields of vision while
      The rabbit-bloodied lawn curled away. 
      Phlox flamed  
        Sows littered in the cyclamen
      Dwarf stars broke free as
      Frazzled molten ore raced across a sky
      Darkening to night.
      Summoning my power
      My hands stay folded in my sleeves.
      Nighttime is my kingdom.

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

      Legacy –

        Difficult to become a warrior without resources. It’s probably not impossible, but it seems to require more psychic strength –or perhaps just the ability to engage a team – than I’ve ever had. On the other hand, I’ve always been able to make the most of whatever resources came my way. It’s the gift I’d like most to pass on to my children, because it helps you persist in the slog and outwit your pursuers.

        I can’t tell you how many job interviews I’ve had where I realized they wanted me to come across as more ruthless, and I just couldn’t do it, even for the purposes of Shapeshifting Performance Art and Fun Impersonations, both of which I was familiar with using on a daily basis and enjoyed. But this was survival we were talking about, the magic metamorphosis of confusion into livelihood. My interest in personal transformation led me to studying a degree in Rehab Counseling and this particular interviewer seemed to want me to express a desire to punish my clients. Maybe that was when I realized I was in the wrong business. I wanted to teach these people how to become warriors.

        How To Become a Warrior

        In heaven the victors
        Celebrate with their rivals
        Not taking it personally
        But loving.
        Forgiving.
        “You thought WHAT?
        I was wrong!”
        You went WHERE?
        It’s so nuts!”
        How we’ll laugh while
        Scars dissolve;
        Iridescent plumage
        Shivers off our beautiful selves
        Unconditionally
        Eternally
        Mysteriously
        Revealed.

      1. 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

          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.