Alysse Aallyn

Category: Confessions

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

    Inspiration –

    The desire to participate in the world of art hit me early. As a young teen, I was fascinated by the internecine struggles of the Trojan War and the Wars of the Roses. History was a family story, history was a crime story. Books for children – the Narnia stories, for example, couldn’t match the explosive, desperate sweep of historical intrigue. I had a facility with English that allowed me to “opt out” of language drills – I read the encyclopedia instead, which was full of improbable information. I loved reading to the class, and the class loved to have me read to them.

    When I entered boarding school at age 14 I really began to write in earnest. But the faculty did not like what I wrote. Moby Dick and the writings of John Steinbeck were seriously offered to me as models. This was the first moment I chose the Warrior Path. I complained that we were not reading any female authors and in fact, made a resolve never to read male authors again (I broke it for the Russians, who were feminine enough for me – especially Turgenev.) I liked Colette, so I read Francoise Sagan. I modeled myself on them – they were literally anathema at my school to such an extent that I decided not to go to college and pursued acting school instead.

    That was a dumb decision literally no one helped me with but by that time I had discarded The Appropriate Path to such an extent I don’t know if anyone could have reasoned me out of it since Adult World seemed so desperately stupid to me. What I chose – I thought – was the world of inspiration where magic could be created, second by second.

    PLAYING HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

    Life class is

    My game – you started it.

    Now I’m too obvious –

    Resembling

    This swollen storehouse where

    nothing is explained.

    We are all

    Open to interpretation.

    Outside the tiny window a single tree

    Flowers in its smug

    Delusion.

    This whiteness weights

    my soul. I long for the whick

    of teeth on lip; and bite

    the bended elbow where the blood 

    lies gathered. Take responsibility 

    For unfinished work.

    Unsignatured because

    It never finished school. 

    No blood here, lady


    You must have

     Imagined it – a

     Powder burn without 

    A bullet.

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

    2. Ego

    From the very beginning I didn’t like doing the same thing as other people. What was the point of that? If someone ordered the same food as me, I changed my order. I was surprised that people would want to do the same thing at the same time. As I grew older, enthusiasm was ruthlessly damped down and my possibilities seemed to harden. Who other people thought you were was “ego”. And they wanted you to stay in that place. Much as I wanted to be admired, maybe even cherished, I could see this categorizing was limiting. A very bad thing. But how to get out of it seemed a conundrum. How can you view the situation you’re in from a point of view you don’t actually have? Lucky for us, there’s imagination! If we are really lucky, imagination crystallizes into Art.

    I discovered we don’t have to settle for Ego, for making ourselves distinct from other people. Artists are shape-shifters – they all the best lines, all the brightest colors, giving themselves the best possibilities.

    When the “multiverse” became popular, I wasn’t surprised. I was used to living several lives at once.

    Being Wrong

    Warriors don’t “settle.”

    We never “stay put”.

    Warrior Essence is

    Exploring new territory.

    Territory that scares you

    Features you don’t recognize

    Sparks uncomfortable feelings.

    I learned to like this.

    Roving continents alone

    Doing everything

    Wrong.