Alysse Aallyn

Category: Creativity

  • The Goddess Oracle – claiming your immortality by Alysse Aallyn

    The Life Force – Energy

      Do your dreams pulse with some energy ripening inside you? You are gathering force for a great work.  

      You Are A Power  – You struggle to take command of your force. You feel the power and strength of undefined wishes and an inchoate longing to create your place in the world. No guide exists to this wilderness, you will have to map this forest yourself. Be brave.

      All Connection Is an Energy Transfer –When you make any contact – even exchange a glance – with another living being, a current of energy passes between you, even if the “other” has been ruled “non-sentient” by our limited – and limiting – standards. In the depth of your being, you feel the electric thrill. This is the basis for the healing behind “forest bathing” and “garden bathing.”

      Energy Drainage –  That fact sets up the possibility that energy – your life force – can be sucked right out of you. Recognize when this is happening – when you are being fed upon. Get away from the predator as fast as you can go.

      Goddess Challenge – There are plenty of traps ahead. Do not become discouraged. Accept that the flow of energy pulses with your every heartbeat, with your sleep/rest cycle, with the obligations you willingly seek to smooth your path.

      Goddess Danger – Some of these obligations become too heavy, others seek to deter you from your set course. Still others offer false maps that seem to promise the ease of “I don’t have to do this alone.” We are all alone inside our heads and you – and only you – must be satisfied with the map you create. If you aren’t there’s no fellowship or wealth that can compensate you for that loss.

      Goddess Opportunity – We revel in and with our fellow travelers. There could be a soulmate among them – for a time or for a life. Accept the wisdom of others, the wisdom of the path, consult other maps in designing your own. Be prepared to alter your map – joyously – with each new and fresh discovery. There will be many. Salut!

      How Did People You Admire Manifest the Life Force? Jesus spent an epic 40 day & nights in the desert. Margaret Mead lived in Samoa studying the Samoans. Carl Sagan describes his “defining moment” as visiting the World’s Fair at four years old. It exploded and expanded his mind. Who are your models? Research them and study their transitions and experiments.

      Magic & Mystery: A you accept yourself and accept your changes, you are confronting the dynamic of change, which is the manifestation of energy in existence. We are all alive and moving. This is a dance and you are the choreographer and star. Erik Erikson said “A good life is like a weaving. Energy is created in the tension. The pull and tug, the struggle, is everything.”

      Commit to tiring yourself out during the day with thought, exercise and interrelations so that you can enjoy healthy sleep at night.

      Models & Mentors – ‘Every thought has an energy. Thoughts send out a magnetic frequency” – Rhonda Byrne

      “Energy is the power that drives every human being. It is not lost by exertion but maintained by it – for it is a faculty of the psyche” – Germaine Greer

      “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration” – Nikola Tesla

      “The more positive energy you throw into the universe, the more positive energy you get back”

      – Nitin Namdeo

      #Haiku: Catalytic Action

      Partake:

      Energy blooms;

      Whirlpools

      Dance;

      I am

      Limitless

      So are you

    1. The Goddess Oracle – claiming your Immortality by Alysse Aallyn

      1. Ego – You

      What kind of goddess are you? is the central question. Your body and spirit have a “grain” much like wood does – we call it “temperament. Going against this spoils your future. Your ego has work to do, figuring out who you are and what kind of strategy you excel at.  What tools fit naturally to your hand? We think, we remember, we discuss, we write and we dream. Jung tells us that in your dream, you are everyone. 

      You Are A Seeker  – You are self-defining and self-validating. You are on a quest. You wish to explore your possible incarnations.

      Goddess Danger – The worst hazard of self-reflection is not navel-gazing (micro study can be very revealing) but solipsism. Aloneness may in fact be Hell. We can never lose touch with those around us because it is others we are fighting for, not for Self alone. Many warlords, sensing your promise, will try to recruit or outright capture you. Avoid warlords who fail to treat you with respect.  In our increasingly autocratic world we are very familiar with Aging Babies who want the rest of us to nursemaid their fussy, immaturity because Growing Up is Ouchy. For God’s sake, for your own sake, for the benefit of the Universe and in hope of Eternity, don’t cater to or worse yet, BECOME one of THOSE. There is no shame in telling others you are “finding yourself.”

      Goddess Challenge – Set a Spirituality Schedule to reflect your needs and interests. Appoint time to be absolutely alone, for meditation and reflection. If you cannot find a room to yourself, a closet will do. You can sit in the meditation position or assume any position that allows you to be comfortable enough to become physically forgetful.  Concentrate first on building a life that allows both inner and outer growth. Surround yourself with people who respect this decision.

      Goddess Opportunity – This is a journey. Accept it. Begin a journal with 1. “I” and write down your meditation thoughts and desires. This can be a poem, a fantasy, a checklist – whatever pattern occurs to you as supportive of your desires. Make a list of goals. Accept that it will evolve, transform.  Push shame away. This is about YOU. Of course as you mature, your goals will evolve, and your journal will reflect that. When you have completed your Time Alone – ten minutes to an hour – whatever works for you – pat yourself on the back. What an achievement! You are started on a path of making changing Nightmares into Dreams and making dreams come true.

      Planning & Mapping:  Goddesses lead a designed life. A diary (also called a Training Journal) offers the ideal format in which to plan. Attempt to quantify the difficulties that you feel and assess possible reactions. Just because a situation is tough does not mean it shouldn’t be explored – on the contrary:

      – A goddess repels takeover  – You are your own goddess – not somebody else’s hired emblem.

      • A goddess feels instinctively what she needs to defend – your soul will reveal it to you – through relationships, through instinct, through time and through dreams.
      • A goddess knows when to let down her guard – there are times to connect, to share, to Love.
      • A goddess learns from mistakes and hones her art. There is no Failure: only Learning. All education is precious.
      • Goddesses look for opportunities – Resistance training sharpens our game. We are each other’s cuttle bones, as well as cuddle bones.
      • Goddesses aren’t afraid of difficulty – the more time it takes the more fun it is. Your life is a long story, full of exciting challenges. Goddesses love gathering around the campfire to share adventures.

      The First Resistance – Often savage, it comes from yourself. Slowly we realize we have hijackers inside our brains wrestling for control. You can recognize these by their negative content. They clearly wish to subdue us into clones which is NOT HEALTHY.

      Becoming a Goddess – It is this resistance that first marks our goddess status. Congratulate yourself. You are on the road.

      Training Journal – Carefully assess your desires versus the demands on you. List expected results if you gave in to either. Develop a concept of health. Is “freedom” staying up all night, consuming whatever substance makes you “feel better”? Clearly not. Assess the negative voice; “You’re weak”, for example. Being “in flight” from the negative voice is actually giving it mastery, so you must stand up to it. Learn to answer back – “I’m in training. I did better today than yesterday.” Keep track of your achievements. Even really small ones: “I meditated for 10 minutes” are significant.

      Accept mystery: Life isn’t “win or lose.” It can’t be quantified because we are magical souls with magic coursing through us. Sometimes it’s impossible to figure out and must simply be absorbed, not rationalized. Learn to enjoy art and accept the relief it offers. Reflect back as much magic & mystery as you can muster. Your tastes will develop according to your growth – that’s a good thing. Treat yourself like a loving sensei who wants the best for you.

      Models & Mentors: Always survey possible models. Who do you admire?

      Is it

      Bruce Lee? “The difference between a goddess and an average man is laser focus.”

      Is it Carl Jung? “I am not what happened to me I am what I choose to become.” Read.  Study. Educate yourself. Develop your own models.

      “Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego falls with it” – Colin Powell

      “Don’t let your ego get in the way of your success”- Tony Horton

      “The ego seeks to divide and separate. The spirit seeks to unify and heal.” – Pema Chodron

      #Haiku: Id vs Ego

      Argumentative

      Executioner

      Prowls brain

      Seeking

      Loopholes

    2. Rough Sleep – the Last Scene – play by Alysse Aallyn

      CORSO’s voice

      I stand at the ready to assist my adorable Jazz.

      SCENE XVI – JAZZ’S DORM ROOM

      (Ordinary dorm room with desk lights, two twin beds, built ins. JAZZ feels her body as if to reassure herself that it’s still there. CORSO – bare-chested – is sitting on one of the beds, studying a laptop)

      CORSO

      Lose something?

      JAZZ

      I lost everything. What are you doing here?

      CORSO

      Installing fun software. You seem distraught – your mood begs improvement. Come over here into the light and let me look at you. 

      JAZZ

      I’m not distraught, I’m disgusted. Hey, that’s my laptop.

      CORSO

      Nothing human disgusts. Take it from me, you’re going to love your new social media interface.

      JAZZ

      The thing that disgusted me wasn’t human.  Is your software a game?

      CORSO

      Everything worth doing devolves into game. As your administrator, I’m in charge of upgrades. We’ll do Mr. Quinn next. Any idea where he’s been hiding?

      JAZZ

      Stevie Farrell, din’t you mean? How did you get in here?

      CORSO

      I’m loco parentis, poor, suspicious little Jazz, just checking up. You’ve been keeping such bad company. And Stevie’s not the worst of it – there’s a prowler around campus who seems to have it in for you. Let’s hope it’s not too late to put your feet on a better course.

      JAZZ

      I’m leaving if you’re not.

                                 CORSO

      Poor Jazz, what can we do to mitigate these fears?

                                 JAZZ

                        (Throws herself impulsively on the other bed)

      I’m not afraid of you. 

      CORSO

      I see we have much work ahead.

      JAZZ

      (She finds his shirt – reacts like it’s infectious and throws it at him)

      Why can’t you keep your clothes on?

      CORSO

      (Catching the shirt effortlessly)

      Stevie and I were very informal; I was hoping we could be informal too.  I gather he confessed his proclivities to you?

      JAZZ

      I heard a lot about how you can’t be trusted.

      CORSO

      Credulous Jazz! We must teach you discernment. Education is challenge, not safety or comfort – I strengthen minds and bodies to appreciate, manipulate and surmount reality. Recreate your own world. If you don’t want those things, then you’re fodder like the rest of them.

       (fans himself with the shirt)

      These rooms are very hot.  Do you know the trick to opening these windows? Aren’t you feeling overdressed? 

      JAZZ

      I saw your game.

      CORSO

      I borrowed bodies that weren’t being used! And aren’t you the better for it?  Restful sleep, interesting dreams, AND a paycheck, now there’s a deal. I’ll throw in little Stevie to be your guide.

      JAZZ

      How can we converse when you pervert language?  You pervert language and ideas. You pervert bodies.

      CORSO

      Debate’s not your forte, Jazz. I can assist with that. You entered this room requesting an upgrade in your selective amnesia. It’s something we all must have, otherwise none of us could function. I can help you control it.

      JAZZ

      If it comes from you, I don’t want it.

      CORSO

      Poor little Jazz! Who could you be channeling – me or him? Or perhaps it’s that desperado asking everyone for scuttlebutt? 

      JAZZ

      I went with the flow till the flow tried to drown me. I’m becoming my own person.

      CORSO

      All freshmen think that. Is the real Jazz so robotic? You used to be so much more fun. You were quite the adventurer.

      (laughs)

      Let’s laugh together. Why so serious? 

       (mimes a ridiculously pulled down clown face)

      Life unlocks all its secret pleasures once you master the key.

      CHASE

      (Bursts into the room)

      Is the key murder?  Soul murder, followed by physical murder to make sure the souls stay dead?

      (JAZZ vaults to her feet, they hug, obviously drawing strength from one another)

                                 CHASE

      Stand up, you bastard.

      CORSO

      Oh, can the paranoia, little Steve. Victimology is so limiting. Jazz and I aren’t involved, if that’s what’s bothering you. We share a strictly business relationship. There’s room for you, too if you down your tools of self-destruction.

                        (Rises imposingly. He’s bigger than CHASE)

      CHASE

      We have all the proof we need.  You can’t get away with it.

      JAZZ

      The bodies are piling up.

                                 CORSO

      But they long to pile, and not feel guilty! Everyone wants to be a porn star!

      CHASE

      We know what you did.

      CORSO

      What a shame, then, that you felt the need to mime unconsciousness. When will feel your feelings and live your truth? Isn’t that what youth is all about?

      JAZZ

      Being drugged isn’t truth!

      CORSO

      Yet you – both of you – acceded to all of it. Names along the bottom line. The law says you’re adults.

      JAZZ

      I know what you did is illegal!

      CORSO

      Fashion to law, little Jazz, and with such startling speed!  Too bad the law is amorphous, the law’s in transition, it’s a creature of fashion just as you were. Things that were illegal last year are perfectly legal today. People go to court and bankrupt themselves to “win” – ask your sad friend – but the law doesn’t help them feel they have won. They spend the rest of their lives trying to recapture the glow of surrender.

      CHASE

      You are vile and despicable – everything about you is saturated with evil.

      CORSO

      I see that you two have made loserdom your bond.  It’s so unhealthy, all this focus on the past. You could enjoy both youth and wealth, but you consciously choose misery. Let’s try ratiocination for a change. Who gives benefits and who gives problems? Haven’t I made all your tiny dreams come true?  You can have Mr. Quinn if you want him, Jazz, anyone can. Now let’s concentrate on upgrading these immature fantasies.

      CHASE

      What if we tell the Dean?

      CORSO

      Who, Bernie? I’m sure you’ll find Bernie doesn’t expect me to police my students’ very randy sex and dream lives.  Bernie and I understand each other perfectly. People love porn, everyone wants an avatar and to feel like a creator.  Let’s consecrate all this blood and shit to transcendental purposes.

      JAZZ

      You use words you can’t understand. We’re soulmates. We’ve seen worlds of possibility, of universe and time.

      CORSO

      You’re welcome!

      JAZZ

      You’ll never know what we can do.

      CORSO

      Pretty sure I can guess. Everything except freedom?

      CHASE

      Your freedom is all fake. You’re nothing but an appetite.  All you create are slaves.

      CORSO

      Oh. Slaves! In a limitless universe, slaves are no fun at all. It’s such a bore always having to direct.

      (fanning himself)

      Jazz, how can you tolerate this hideous heat? I know there’s a trick to these windows.  

      (Successfully opens window)

      Stevie, get us a drink. Let’s sit down and talk this over like grownups.  

      CHASE

      Not a chance.

      (BEX appears spot-lit on the TOWER LIFT, scanning with his binoculars, holding his shotgun at the ready. He sights his quarry & racks his slide)

      JAZZ

      Look out the window, Dr. Corso.

      (She pulls CHASE away)

      Tell me what you see.

      CORSO

      (Peering)

      Who’s out there, Jazz? Bile stained, piss stained revenants skulking home for parietals? 

      (BEX climbs awkwardly out on the tower lift, hooking his leg, trying to get a good shot)

      CORSO

      (Waves out at the world)

      Run home, little oneironauts! Your memory cards expired!

      (JAZZ grabs CHASE and pulls him to the floor. Shots ring out. CORSO, looks down at his chest as red stains bloom across his back. Plummets slowly out through the window. Recoil causes BEXto lose his footing – drop his gun – throw his arms up – cry out – fall)

                        JAZZ

      Set a demon to catch a demon!

      CHASE

      May the aspirations of murderers always overreach.

      JAZZ

      And those of lovers override.

      CHASE

      Time to free the others? Whether they like it or not?

      JAZZ

      Kiss me.

      (They kiss. Sacred music, pink glitter. DARKNESS.  FINAL CURTAIN)

      END

    3. Rough Sleep – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      Back in DREAM LAB – CORSO calling with baton and headphones)

      CORSO

      Children! Come back! Playtime is over! Wake up, children! Don’t get lost in NeverNeverLand!

      (CORSO conducts Flight of the Valkyrie. JAZZ and CHASE are sucked apart to opposite sides of the stage.  Lowlights come up on Dream Lab. CHASE falls back on his recliner. Other students thrashing and moaning. JAZZ falls to floor, CHASE struggles to her side to help her up) 

      JAZZ

      (Retching)

      I think I saw death.

      CHASE

      And I saw the face of evil.

      CORSO

      (Appearing with a roll of paper towels and a bucket of water bottles – lights up all the way, music down)

      Rough sleep?

      CHASE

      Yeah. But was worth it.

      CORSO

      I’m talking to Miss Suzino. Gave yourself a bloody nose there, sport.

      (CORSO hands out bottles of water)

      JAZZ

       (feels her face)

      I did? Is it my blood?

      KOO

      I’m definitely going to throw up.

      CORSO

      First times are always the worst times. Care for a basin?

      KOO

      No, I want a bathroom.

      (Staggers off futon, SOLIZ reaches out to her)

      SOLIZ

      I’ll help her.

      (They lurch off behind Ladies Locker)

      CORSO

      Any more foreheads require mopping? Allow me to audition my Florence Nightingale impersonation. I’ve been universally praised for my bedside manner.

      JAZZ

      (Mopping herself)

      Maybe I’m the one who died.

      CORSO

      Forget the safe word?

      RAD

      There’s a safe word?  Now he tells us.

      CHASE

      How about “Stop”. Or “No”?

      CORSO

      The problem with that is behind the fear lies the wish.

      CHASE

      Behind the wish lies the demon. So there is no safe word.

      CORSO

      How about “I quit”?  Is that what you’re trying to say, Mr. Quinn?

      CHASE

      You first.

      CORSO

      (They glare at each other. Horrible retching noises from locker room)

      Now, now, now. Just when we were getting along so well.

      (ZANE has stood up and is lurching around as if sleepwalking.)

      CORSO

      Mr. Braden, assist your colleague back to his launching pad.

      (RAD stands up, goes to ZANE, wakes him, and leads him to his futon to sit.  SOLIZbrings a green-faced KOO out of the Ladies’)

      RAD

      My name is Borden.

      CORSO

      Now wasn’t that fun? Good times. Upchucking can hardly be an unusual experience for you, Miss Loflin. 

      SOLIZ

      Don’t give her so much next time. She’s little. She can’t get the same dose as everyone else.

      CORSO

      I wish the guinea pigs would stop wrestling with me for control of this experiment. I make the decisions around here. The doctor knows what he’s doing.

      SOLIZ

      Sorry.

      CORSO

      Now I posit the ultimate question.  Anybody “fly”?  Did we achieve liftoff?

      SOLIZ

      I think I fell. It seemed so real. Maybe it was only a dream.

      CORSO

      Only a tear in the fabric the universe, a burp from the hippocampus, a haiku from the collective unconscious, an oracle of future empowerment? Speak to us, Miss D’Accosta. Tell us everything.

      SOLIZ

       (Stands up to act out events she describes)

      I was in the elevator at Hadleigh – for some reason I was in a big hurry.  I remember looking at my watch but my watch had stopped.  It was an analog watch without any hands. The elevator opened on the top floor and I rushed out.  All these people were staring at me and they started to laugh. I realized I was naked. I couldn’t get back in the elevator – the doors had melted. The floors were melting and the whole building lurched to one side.  I panicked. I was thrown against people and I hate people touching me but I was helpless. No soulmates, just a gang. I’m scared of gangs. They were herding me. But there was the window so I jumped right through, thinking, maybe I can fly. I felt the glass tearing apart my body. At first I felt this great release.  A sense of excitement. Like I can do anything I want, like I got away with it. I was trying to move my arms and legs – it seemed like slo-mo – so I pumped and pumped – moving more frantically – but I knew all along it wouldn’t work. It doesn’t work with swimming. You’ve got to find the peaceful center but there was no peaceful center.  So I fell – knowing you’d be disappointed and maybe flunk me but hoping my crushed body could tell the scientists something.  That second before I hit I was – it was the most disgusting feeling – suspended, staring at the chalk outline where I my corpse would be.  I remember thinking, “I hope we get a second chance” but all I heard was laughter. Others were getting it. Others were doing it. Splat! Face-first into the pavement. I felt my face pushed into my brain, my spine crumbling – body turning inside out, I became “the visible woman” with her organs on the outside. That was right before my organs exploded like water balloons and there was nothing left.   I was completely gone and so there was nothing left to go to heaven, no welcoming light, no happy faces. Just sadness and loss; a night of blackout drinking.  That couldn’t have been an out of body experience. It was more like a nightmare. Right? 

      (SOLIZ’s face is sweaty, anxious. CORSO, hand to chin, considering)

      CORSO

      A classic shame dream. You felt humiliated by your naked body – a very nice body I might add – as if by some unwilling revelation of your essential self. A common anxiety dream, I assure you.  Hampered by cultural imperatives your attempted  “escape” was disguised as self-punishment; you  “looked down”, ergo tumbled and fell. Almost Greek in its simplicity.  I especially liked the note about the handless watch.  Very Dali-esque.

      RAD

       I’m all for naked dreams.

      JAZZ

      Our naked selves aren’t our essential selves.

      CORSO

      (Looking at her very displeased. Those guinea pigs again)

      How so, Miss Suzino?

      JAZZ

      I mean, everyone’s naked body is alike.  Choices reveal our essential selves.

      CORSO

      Spoken like a fashion major. How jejeune.

      CHASE

      I know what she means. It’s why people get tattoos.

      CORSO

      Says a tattooed denizen of the underclass.

      ZANE

      Everybody’s naked body is not alike! I wish!

      RAD

      (Trying so hard to be ZANE’s buddy)

      Right! I mean, if only!

      JAZZ

      I mean generally.

      CORSO

      We split hairs.  Nevertheless you expose the dangers of word selection, Miss D’Accosta. Forget “flying”. Who went elsewhere? Absolutely elsewhere?  Just tell me that.

      (ZANE reacts visibly.)

      CHASE

      I did!

      (Waving his whole arm like a five year old)

      Me, me, me!

      CORSO

      (Repressively)

      I think Mr. Pettigrew is trying to speak.

    4. Rough Sleep – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      (Perceptual Studies Student Lab at College . Enter CORSO in Burberry, cap and scarf)

      CORSO

      Sorry I’m late.  I’ll make it up.  Time’s our bitch, but that’s what we’re here for – get on top of it.  I see you’ve met my teaching assistant, Mr. Quinn. 

      (Indicates CHASE) 

      CHASE

      I thought you fired me.

      CORSO

      But you’re so charming as my warm-up act.  Who could resist you? Consider yourself re-hired.

      ZANE

      (Pointing at CHASE)

      Ringer! Ringer!

      CORSO

      (Opens a door)

      Welcome to Paradise. After you.

      (Lights up on  DREAM RESEARCH LAB ;  six recliners arranged in a circle – lockers to either side– students study their environment. Glittering disco ball lowers from ceiling shedding fractals. Padded floor; students step gingerly.  At center of recliners a black chalice on a tripod emits dry ice smoke)

      CORSO

      (Slams door aggressively)

      Now you’re committed.

      RAD

      My folks always said I’d end up committed.

                                 ZANE

      And in a padded cell.

      CORSO

      God forbid you should fall down in your dream-throes and sue the institute that birthed your intellect.

      CHASE

      Where are the sensors?

      CORSO

      Everything’s wireless these days, poor Mr. Quinn! What are you worried about? Nobody would dare to censor you. 

      KOO

      (Gestures at the disco ball)

      Is that a camera?

      CORSO

      The Eye of History.

      (Claps hands)

      Chop, chop, little ones – Enough rubbernecking.  Time’s a-wasting.  Male locker room there, females that-away. Discard outerwear and belongings. Let’s get going.

      (As CHASE passes him, CORSO says dryly)

      The old razzle dazzle?  REALLY?

      (Banging of locker doors)

      CHASE

      We’ll see.

      CORSO

      We certainly will. Now, if you children would arrange yourselves male, female – thusly.

      RAD

      Like some antique dinner party?

      CORSO

      Sacred geometry.  We need all the energy we can harness. We are immersing ourselves in the flip side of reality- the Unseen. 

      (JAZZ and CHASE are side by side. CORSO distributes mugs)

      CORSO

      Tea time!

      CHASE

      What is this stuff?

      CORSO

      Sorry, Mr. Quinn, research is not a democracy. All that’s guaranteed is, you sleep on cue without allergic overdrive.

      ZANE

      I’m not allergic to Nurse Howk, either. Yowza!

      RAD

      (Shaking his hand as if from a burn)

      I know, right?

      CORSO

      Drink up and settle down.  I am collecting mugs so I will know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice.

      JAZZ

      Yuck! This stuff tastes like bark.

      (RAD barks like a dog)

      CORSO

      Shotgun it, Miss Suzino. Knock it back. Isn’t that the college way?

      .        (CORSO collects mugs, turning them upside down to be sure they’re empty)

      Musical selection?  Classical or non-classical?

      ZANE

      Anything so long as it’s not classical.

      CHASE

      Anything – so long as it’s classical.

      (They glare at each other. CORSO laughs)

      CORSO

      The bulls do clash! Ocean sounds it is!

      (He conducts the music) 

      Everyone hold hands and close eyes please. Let the bonding begin!

      CHASE

      (Muttering)

      Bondage, more like.

      CORSO

      Mr. Quinn!  Must I gag you? That can be arranged!

      (CHASE finally closes his eyes, rocking back and forth to get comfortable. Lights go down to twilight level on DREAM LAB.  CORSO ascends on TOWER LIFT, wearing earphones and holding a conductor’s baton)

      CORSO

      Welcome to cosmic dreaming. You will dream at such a depth your mind will burst the bonds of selfhood and explode free and untrammeled into the universe. Free from the chains of time, from identity itself, we uncover the truth the quotidian obscures;  we are one. Think on it. Think what it would means to be freed from debt, obligation, relationship, guilt, regret or loss. There are no mistakes.  Without identity you are released from suffering.  Everything you have ever wanted we can achieve together, effortlessly, and in abundance. Desires and longing are the fuel that rocket us to the stratosphere of rarest air. Once we merge in the great Oneness, we will dream uniquely and together.  

      (CORSO turns a page on his music stand)

      Learning to harness our dream, we will control it, uniting our powers generously to become a potent force of reckoning. Prepare yourselves for the ultimate luxury – surrender – lost in the imaginative union that has always been your birthright.  Time to claim and master your entitlement. In our relaxation mass consciousness will seize control…But you must be quick! The garden door is closing and you’ll be left behind… See, the stars are out. The world inside and the world without await your signal – longing to merge.  Only the clatter in your head prevents the natural fruition of your indissoluble longing. 

      Doesn’t it feel good leaving the world behind? The universe itself is lost beneath you now.  Now flesh itself melts away as invisible imperfections open themselves to perfection. Accept the freedom you are offered. When you open your eyes, you will be gazing down at the husk of your unwelcome, banished self.  

      (CORSO’S spot is extinguished, spot rises on JAZZ who stands up eyes closed, feeling out in front of her like sleepwalker.  She feels her way to the edge of the stage. No other students stir.  CORSO’s voice orates as if from space.)

      CORSO

      Now the room itself vanishes, your earthly fears becoming someone else’s problem. Release those worries.  Look how tiny they seem, as they disappear over the horizon. 

      (JAZZ shakes head impatiently and crabwalks down the steps toward audience. 

      JAZZ

      Where is this place? It smells like death. The end of everything.

    5. Trials Inspire Fiction – by Alysse Aallyn

      GREAT TRIALS INSPIRE FICTION

      A trial is a cutaway of its time and place, a look not just into mores and modalities but secrets and sewage. Two of the most interesting trials I have seen – and I watched every day – were Beth Carpenter’s trial in New London, CT and Michael Peterson’s in Raleigh, N.C. (both 2002, both for first degree murder.)

      Each trial exposed the inner workings of a family (two families in the Carpenter case) and were so enormously influential for me that I wrote fiction about them.

      Both trials revealed levels of shocking hypocrisy so deep we could have been in Victorian London; these accused would do anything to get what they wanted while maintaining social appearances.

      At the time of his wife’s death Michael Peterson was gay sexting on hotmilitarystud.com; and although he insisted his wife knew about his affairs her daughter (who lived with them) did not think so. But the real shock in this case was that an identical death was exhumed from his past – another woman who died on bloody staircase. Both skulls revealed seven blows to the top of the head.

      The first woman’s daughters – whom Peterson acquired along with her assets – thought she had died of an aneurysm. What would it feel like to see their mother’s real skull revealed in court for all the world to see? That was the genesis of Depraved Heart, though I changed everything else to create my own world.

      In the Carpenter case, Beth came from a family of strivers who felt soiled and humiliated by their other daughter’s marriage to a part time stripper tow truck driver. Beth was accustomed to ordering her boyfriends around – two of them testified that she took over their cars and bank accounts as soon as they showed interest. Her boss, Hayman Clein, a successful Connecticut real estate attorney, fell for her attractions and became her virtual slave. When she asked him to find her a hit man, he offered up his coke dealer – and the three of them went down for the crime. That this simple ask keeping her own hands clean made Beth a murderer too is something she should have known – she also was a lawyer.

      I used aspects of her overpowering character to create my Queen of Swords.

      It’s a truism that real life needs to be toned down for fiction: no one would believe it.

    6. The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      VIRGINIA
      I should never have married you. Women see the worst of men, how cruel they are at home, how they believe in ranks and ceremonies, how they demand praise and management. We bring out what’s bad in each other. We should live separately.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, I admit I have been a brute. I told you that before you married me. I have faults, vices and beastlinesses. I am lustful, a whorer, a gazer after women, a vicious man who has loved the refinements of vice. I have seen the filth of the brothel, know that it is filth and still I’ve lain with the ugliest whore. I have been selfish, jealous, and cruel. You are the most beautiful, most magical among women. Yet I must have you, and not some inferior female who would enrage me with her inferiority and submission. I am terminally and unconditionally in love with you. God, the happiness I’ve had being with you and talking to you – mind to mind and soul to soul. I don’t care so much for the physical part. You are the best thing I have ever had in my life. I will never be content, now, with second best.

      VIRGINIA
      And here am I, a failure, childless, no writer and insane. You confessed your sins before we married, but I knew I was insane with a mad sister and a madder uncle and yet I married you.

      LEONARD
      Tell me the truth. Why did you marry me, the penniless, trembling Jew?

      VIRGINIA
      Perhaps only because you were my beloved brother Thoby’s best friend. He said, I’ve met a man so violent, so savage, he trembles with contempt for the whole human race. And that was you.

      LEONARD
      Thoby was so beautiful it was difficult to speak with him of iniquity or despair.

      VIRGINIA
      Thoby had the kind of beauty that defends itself from caress.

      LEONARD
      And you’re the same. With such gestures one falls in love for a lifetime.

      VIRGINIA
      Thoby and I were so close until he went away to that school, where the boys fought and buggered. When he came back he was so different, harsh and cruel. He beat me. I just stood there and let him pound me with his fists, feeling the most awful sadness; why hurt another person? He showed off by abusing me. I refused to surrender the space we used to have, but he said, Girls must give up. That’s what it means to be a girl. It was essential for the fellowship of men that I be kept out. Because you were his greatest friend I hoped the best of him lived on, in you. But you are nothing like him.

      LEONARD
      The Goth was always a law unto himself. He didn’t acquire friends, he annexed worshippers. You and Vanessa looked so like him our Circle called you “Visigoths.” Misses Virginia and Vanessa Stephens, so beautiful that dogs turned to look at them in the street.

      VIRGINIA
      Trust me, it’s not that pleasant having dogs turn to look at one in the street. So, you married me, thinking I was like Thoby and you were disappointed.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, you must stop thinking everything is your fault. We were primed to fall in love because of our friendships, but we actually fell in love because we saw each other’s true selves.

      VIRGINIA
      I saw how shocked you were when you realized you had married a madwoman.

      LEONARD
      Life may be an obstacle race but that doesn’t mean one would want the obstacles removed.

      VIRGINIA
      I should have told you!

      LEONARD
      Did I tell you my tremor is hereditary? My father had it, too. Should I have confessed that? We didn’t want to talk about our families. We wanted to revel in each other’s hopes and dreams.

      VIRGINIA
      When we talked, I forgot everything except the joy of our conversation. Originality and freedom, purity and restraint, we discussed it all. Here’s someone who cares, I thought, about the hidden pockets of emotion, someone who wants to work like a steam engine at uncovering the truth. I needed to know that when I weep, I am not the only weeper. You almost persuaded me we could change the world with just our two brains.

      LEONARD
      Nothing’s more important than the two of us united.

      VIRGINIA
      Yet somehow here I am, locked up in a madhouse.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, this isn’t a madhouse and you are not insane. But we need the doctor’s permission for you to leave. We must figure out, the pair of us, how you can assume control. I don’t believe in guilt or apologies. I know what it is to be driven beyond endurance but I know I can avoid the whirlpools if you help me, Virginia. Let me help you learn how to assume control.

      VIRGINIA
      What’s the use of men talking to women, we’re too different. We must hate and fear each other. Women can’t even step outside their doors with any safety. If you could strip off my skin you would see my nerves gone white with fear of you.

      LEONARD
      You’re talking to the member of a despised race rooted out as pests wherever we settle. My nerves should be white with fear of your kind. It’s a fetid, sordid world. Yet we two are somehow different. In Ceylon, I took out my gun to put an end to the utter foulness, the stupid blind vindictive foulness of everything. You see, we have that in common.

      VIRGINIA
      You did? You really tried to shoot yourself?

      LEONARD
      I thought that the only reason one doesn’t commit suicide is that one is either a selfish coward or already dead and rotten. The one thing that saved me was a vision of you, the beautiful Miss Stephen who wrote like an angel and quoted Plato. I longed to meet you. But I was so afraid of making a fool of myself my very soul and stomach trembled.

      VIRGINIA
      You stayed alive because of me?

      LEONARD
      I did. So you must return the favor. Lytton Strachey and I wrote long letters back and forth. He argued against suicide and insisted that I propose.

      VIRGINIA
      Lytton asked me to marry him once. Thank God, I didn’t. The very idea of his criticisms would have kept me from writing anything.

      LEONARD
      He understood all that. He said the only person who was right for you was me.

      VIRGINIA
      But he didn’t know about my spoiled, ruined body.

      LEONARD
      You have a perfect body!

      VIRGINIA
      Currently being stuffed like a Strasbourg goose, thanks to you. Strapped down, force fed, shot with drugs.

      LEONARD
      All because you refuse to eat. Let me order dinner right now and feed it to you. How about that?

      VIRGINIA
      I’m not hungry. Oh, let me die, Leonard! Let me go! Find a girl who can love you properly! I failed in the bedroom – you made that perfectly clear.

      LEONARD
      Perhaps copulation is inherently degrading. Really, horseback riding is more pleasurable.

      VIRGINIA
      But there’s children to look forward to, surely.

      LEONARD
      I don’t want children and if you really read The Wise Virgins, you’ll know why.

      VIRGINIA
      But we won’t raise them in a strict Jewish home!

      LEONARD
      There’s your prejudice again! It wasn’t the Judaism, it was the endless striving for dominance of tiny minds. How I hated it!

      VIRGINIA
      Father shrieked and screamed that we were sending him to the poorhouse with our expensive household bills. I brought him a catalog of King’s College classes for Ladies but he said he couldn’t spare me because it was my turn to pet him, soothe him, cut his meat! I wanted to write, but I couldn’t keep it private. Once I had a diary with a lock but Thoby stole it, so I pasted my secret pages into a book.

      LEONARD
      After my father died we really were headed for the poorhouse. My brother had to work to support the family.

      VIRGINIA
      Don’t you think every family is a lonely caravan, absolutely private, silent and unknown? I see us wedged in together, surrounded by vast space we couldn’t cross. It seemed impossible to break through the dark cloud and shed light on those shrouded, curtained rooms. Censors, visionary figures everywhere admonished us. Father told me no intelligent being had any right to believe in God, but when I was six years old, I dreamed that I was God.

      LEONARD
      And your mother?

      VIRGINIA
      Mother said there couldn’t be a God because no just God would have killed the splendid Herbert Duckworth, her first husband. She loved him so. She never told my father she loved him.

      LEONARD

      Never?

      VIRGINIA

      Never. I wrote stories in which clever, courageous children rescue their families and bring hope to the sick. Do you believe in God, Leonard?

      LEONARD
      No one believes in God. Virginia, we must refuse to be determined by our pasts. Our parents had too many children to cope but we won’t make the same mistake. Don’t you want to be free, Virginia? With so many mouths to feed, freedom’s never possible.

      VIRGINIA
      I know you’re only saying that because Dr. Hyslop insists the mad should never propagate.

      LEONARD
      I swear I’m not. Nessa has children – and with all her lovers looks to spew many more – wouldn’t that be enough for you?

      VIRGINIA
      (turning away)

      Surely loneliness destroys us. Futile and infertile – aren’t those more than adequate reasons for self-murder?

      LEONARD
      We’ll never be futile, not us. You’ve written a wonderful novel, Virginia. I know you’ll write many more.

      VIRGINIA
      Received by my family in complete silence.

      LEONARD
      They’re barely literate. My whole point is that family shouldn’t matter. I’ve freed myself – I never see my mother if I can help it. Remember how upset she was to be excluded from our wedding? Surely an ambitious person’s gaze should widen, take in more?

      VIRGINIA
      Take in who? Society, like the Countess of Carnarvon? Publishers like Gerald?

      LEONARD
      How about other modern thinkers, trying to do what we are doing? Finding new ways to be, see, think, do, connect. Roger Fry with his “significant form”. Maynard Keynes with aggregate demand, E. M. Forster’s clever novels. The literary impressionism you attempted in Voyage Out.

      VIRGINIA
      Forster isn’t clever. He thinks women should be banned from the London Library Board and never allowed on the grass at Cambridge. How on earth can dry, dusty books ever make up for real, live children?

      LEONARD
      Was your childhood really anything you’d care to revisit, Virginia?

      VIRGINIA
      Yes, yes, yes. If I could only tell you, or anybody. Oh, the magic summers at St. Ives! Lost, gone forever. Paradise before, catastrophe after. Now whatever it is I want I cannot tell. I was born with extraordinary capacities for feeling, but you say bury my emotions or they will never let me out.

      LEONARD
      Not bury them, Virginia. Manage them. We need to convince the world that you are fine and well. Let’s get to the bottom of the ideas that torment you. How many years was that paradise of childhood, really? Two or three? We have our whole, long, fruitful lives ahead of us.

      VIRGINIA
      It was paradise before the deaths began.

      LEONARD
      There’s no escaping death, Virginia.

      VIRGINIA
      You intimate that children would drive me mad?

      LEONARD
      They would certainly stop you working. Can you see a house filled with nannies, nurses, servants, their followers and lovers? Cockney quarrels and endless Bedlam difficulties? You once described your nursery as a cage where you were forced to perform compulsory tricks.

      VIRGINIA
      And what do you call this damnable house? Cousin Madge says you’re mean and think of nothing but money.

      LEONARD
      Madge is an idiot. Let’s resolve to cut all idiots on principles of health.

      VIRGINIA
      If that were only possible! Here I am in George’s house, sentenced to eternally hawking Gerald’s books!

      LEONARD
      But George isn’t here. And there are other publishers in the world besides Gerald.

      VIRGINIA
      Worse ones, doubtless. Did you read Gissing, or even Meredith?

      LEONARD
      Then we’ll publish our books ourselves.

      VIRGINIA
      (turning to face him)

      Could such a thing be possible?

      LEONARD
      Of course, it is. You know your Women’s Cooperative promotes apprenticeships. I think the Working Man’s College teaches printing.

      VIRGINIA
      Oh, imagine if that were so! How I’d love to print! I used to bind books, I liked that. The tools were so beautiful. Papers from Italy, leathers from Africa. The smell alone was heavenly.

      LEONARD
      Don’t these doctors recommend handiwork?

      VIRGINIA
      Tat-work! Or crochet!

      LEONARD
      Let’s defeat them, then. Can’t we, together, push the world our way? Or at the very least carve out a tiny corner where we can live and thrive?

      VIRGINIA
      If only I could trust you.

    7. The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      (Scene 4. The conservatory. VIRGINIA sits unmoving before a tea-table. Enter LEONARD.)

      LEONARD
      I see I am in time for tea. May I join you?

      VIRGINIA
      I can’t stop you.

      LEONARD

      (daringly pulls his chair to the table)

      How are you feeling?

      VIRGINIA
      Like a helpless baby on the shore of life, turning over pebbles. The ocean tosses me pebbles and I turn them over, one by one. I’m naked, a child, and no one helps me.

      LEONARD
      I want to help you. May I pour? Lovely cakes.

      (he pours two cups, carefully serves her a cake, takes one himself, munches and sips)

      Delicious. Sir George keeps an excellent cook.

      VIRGINIA
      His brain is in his stomach. Or rather, he has a stomach instead of a brain but no one’s noticed. I’m afraid the tea is cold. They won’t let me have a spirit lamp in case I set the place on fire, like mad Mrs. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

      LEONARD
      The tea is perfect. Oolong, I notice. May I sugar yours?

      VIRGINIA
      You’re certainly sugaring everything else. Why are you in such a good mood?

      LEONARD
      I’m happy to see you looking so well. What have you been thinking?

      VIRGINIA
      That I want to write a novel about silence. Depression interests me. One could make a game of assembling the fractured pieces, capturing the things people don’t say. How deeply they drive themselves into me, those things people daren’t say aloud! It seems everyone is in agreement that the truth of women must be suppressed. Repress, control. If I am going to write all this I will need a different word than novel or people won’t know what to expect. Elegy, perhaps?

      LEONARD
      You were born to write, Virginia. Your book is beautiful. I mean The Voyage Out.

      VIRGINIA
      My book? My poor sad, dull novel which shall certainly be abused? A whole made painfully from shivering fragments. “The spring, bare and bright like a virgin fierce in her chastity, scornful in her purity, was laid on fields entirely careless of beholders.” I tried to speak truth but I collapsed under the burden of my failure.

      LEONARD
      You can’t think how I envy you your spring of fantastic imagination.
      It’s beautifully written. But it’s so very sad. Tell me, why must Rachel die before the wedding?

      VIRGINIA
      Because the fiancé is based on Clive and who would ever want to marry him?

      LEONARD
      Nessa did.

      VIRGINIA
      He kept his real face very well hidden. The things he says about me to others! Adrian showed me the letters!

      LEONARD
      He’s angry because you refused him. Clive’s a monster. We’re in complete agreement. What if we eliminated monsters from your life? What would you write next?

      VIRGINIA
      It’s not possible to eliminate monsters. Look at this new war they’re brewing. War is a stupid, violent, hateful, idiotic, trifling, mean, ignoble display. Why should I dare to love you when you will only fight and die, trodden underfoot in some soggy foreign field?

      LEONARD

      You won’t get rid of me that easily. Dr. Craig has given me a dispensation because of my tremor.

      VIRGINIA

      So you’ve seen Dr. Craig. Is he as stupid as the others?

      LEONARD

      He thinks we need to design a healthy life. I think so too. And because your healthy life is writing, I want to hear about what you’ll write next.

      VIRGINIA
      (dreamily)

      I want to write about the islands of light swimming through the grass. I want to show the peace, the unity in the smallest flower – but whenever I try the great ugly beast on the beach stamps and snorts.

      LEONARD
      What beast?

      VIRGINIA
      He is chained, but he pulls at his chain. I’m so afraid – he might escape.

      LEONARD
      Is this a memory, Virginia?

      VIRGINIA
      What have we but memory? Women are the beggars of every family; memory is our only treasure, the only dowry we inherit. Tell the truth, said father. But mother said sometimes a lie is better than the truth, because of feelings. You must spare people’s feelings, but only if they have the right feelings. What if their feelings are false to begin with? My feelings were never the right ones. Father was my writing teacher, did I tell you that?

      LEONARD
      And what was his recipe?

      VIRGINIA
      He said only write the truth and say exactly what you mean.

      LEONARD
      If only that were possible! You saw how I botched my turn.

      VIRGINIA
      But the truth is that when father died, I hated him. I was so relieved to be free of the exacting tyrant, the histrionic, self-pitying, violent, deaf, alternately loved and hated father. We all were. We fled that house, from a crypt slimy with fungus, disgusting with mold, gushing a sour stench of decay.

      (A catch in her voice)

      How we rejoiced! But in truth we had graduated from a life of suppressed rage into one of perpetual mourning. In my fantasies, Father confesses and repents his crimes, asking my forgiveness. But he could never do that, really. Everyone saw him as the pinnacle of reason and privilege, yet he felt ill-used by everyone he knew, even by life itself. I wonder, was he haunted by a devil, by some demon? Was it not he, himself, but something sitting on his shoulder that pecked at us so fiercely?

      LEONARD
      Naturally he grieved when your mother died. He must have altered greatly then.

      VIRGINIA
      My mother’s death was the greatest disaster that could possibly have happened. Father sat through countless meals groaning aloud about how he wished to die. Do you know, it is my worst fear that I will become like him. It is a fate more to be feared than madness, to my mind. He is inexplicable. Extraordinarily gifted, godlike, yet somehow childlike. There was an infantile fixation! Bubbling up from some dark place, I suppose, below the level of conscious thought. But he was protected by society, as we were not. In the privacy of our home he seemed unbound by any of the laws of ordinary people. Yet he desired constant pity! We were the ones forced to be self-controlled and coolly analytical, plotting ways to get around him. But when he shouted at Nessa I hated him so much I could have killed him myself. Our punishment came when Thoby died. Violet and Vanessa also were stricken with typhoid but only the sheltered males perished.

      LEONARD
      Thoby’s death wasn’t punishment. Thoby died of a typhoid germ. If these men are fragile as you say, how could your father be the brute you dreamed of, stamping on the beach?

      VIRGINIA
      All you men are brutes, with your gaming, your competitions, your subjugation and your wars. Men use knives, to cut things, to sacrifice, while women use needle and thread, to sew them up. But nothing’s as good once it’s been repaired. When my father threw a fish into the bottom of the boat, I felt I suddenly was that fish, flopping, gasping, drowning in the very air all had sworn was safe to breathe. I had more in common with waves and seabirds than with that man.

      LEONARD
      Now Virginia, you mustn’t get excited.

      VIRGINIA
      The great secret is not to feel. Strong feelings create an abyss between oneself and others. No one ever says anything they really mean. I am bored by men and their silly violence and wars. I detest the masculine point of view. I am bored by heroism, virtue and honor. Men’s acquisitive instincts cause them to desire other people’s fields and goods, to make frontiers and flags, battleships and poison gas, to offer up their own lives and their children’s lives. Why should I submit to them, why endure a lifetime of unpaid service to their shoddy interests?

      LEONARD
      I agree we are a disgusting species. But man’s only locomotion is logic and reason. We must never give up.

    8. The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      (Scene 2. The Conservatory at Dalingridge Hall. VIRGINIA sits slackly in an old-fashioned wheeled chair, gazing into nothingness.)

      LEONARD
      How are you today, Virginia? Sleep well?

      VIRGINIA

      (galvanizing)

      How can there be sleep for those of us who see the flesh melted off the world? Have you come to gloat over the shattered splintered fragments of my body? You care nothing for what they do to me! You macerate my soul. With sleep comes horrible dreams. I was trapped in a drainpipe with the savage hairy man who squats, gobbling and belching, dabbling at my entrails. Soon I will be shrouded in snail slime sticky from the hollow stalk.
      Get away from me! I don’t want to see you!

      LEONARD

      (humbly)

      I’ve brought chocolate creams. You used to love those.

      VIRGINIA
      You are a shadow. You torment me with shadows of the people I might have been, all my unborn selves. Go away, Leonard. Your cause is hopeless.

      LEONARD
      No cause is hopeless as long as we can talk.

      VIRGINIA
      I have nothing to say to you. Your kind disgusts me.

      LEONARD
      You can’t realize how utterly you would end my life too if you died or ever dismissed me. Aren’t I still your precious Mongoose? Aren’t you my beloved Mandrill?

      VIRGINIA
      Any real relationship between men and women is unattainable. It’s all nonsense and lies.

      LEONARD
      Weren’t we going to create our own special relationship? A real marriage, unlike everyone else’s, a vital, living thing. That’s what we promised.

      VIRGINIA
      And then you brought me to George’s house, you traitor.

      LEONARD
      Officialdom requires certification following suicide attempts! You’d be a ward in chancery! This is the only way!

      (He seems about to sit down, she stops him)

      VIRGINIA
      If you sit I’ll start screaming and I won’t stop.

      LEONARD
      I’m so afraid of the future, Virginia, if you can’t get strong.

      VIRGINIA
      You want me to tolerate filthy fingers stuck down my throat! That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it?

      LEONARD
      Is eating chocolate creams so terrible?

      (He offers the box)

      VIRGINIA
      Don’t come near me.

      (He sets the box on the little table, kneels)

      LEONARD
      I would grovel to you and kiss your toes if you would only listen to me, Virginia. Aren’t you better now? Aren’t you getting stronger? Look, you’re free and out of your straps. You’re sleeping some and eating a little. Have the hallucinations gone away?

      VIRGINIA
      I’m terrified of sleep. I’m terrified of chloral and the nightmares it provides. When I wake at night and understand all the terror, violence and unreason still presiding over the universe it is worse than death. I am nothing. I am nobody. I am I-less.

      LEONARD
      Didn’t you always say that only writing that brings order to madness? You called art humanity’s one defense.

      VIRGINIA
      Art is a conspiracy among the civilized. Yet how can we call people civilized who insist on enslaving half their populace? Behold myself, empty-handed and force-fed, by your order. I know I have a good mind, but you have surrendered me to the very people bent on destroying it.

      LEONARD
      Civilization is largely humbug, Virginia. That may be the only thing I’ve learned. I always felt I’m playing a part upon a stage. You’re the only honest person I’ve ever met and now you’re at risk. I just want you to get well, Virginia, so we can plan our hundred books.

      VIRGINIA
      You care nothing for my plans! Shall I ever write again one of those sentences that gives me the most intense pleasure? For years now, people jerked wires to make me jump like a jack in the box when all I want is peace. I long to be ten miles beneath the sea. Here I am stuck in polar ice, harassed by barbarians.

      LEONARD
      Your ice drifts toward home.

      VIRGINIA

      I have no home.

      LEONARD

      You will get well and our life will become possible again. As soon as you gain weight and master some calm and some cheer, we are free!

      VIRGINIA
      Calm and cheer in a world like this one! Don’t treat me like some retarded infant. When we walked together at Asheham you inveighed against the world as a stupid, corrupt brothel.

      LEONARD
      And I still believe that. I wanted to go into politics but politics is brutal and discouraging. Now I think I must change the world through workers’ cooperatives. We must stand up against all the evils that we see.

      VIRGINIA
      You said writers are born to be unhappy.

      LEONARD
      I fear to some extent that must be true. It’s harder on you, because you’re a sensitive, poetic writer. But if we swear to support each other –

      VIRGINIA
      My punishment is unending. Mother didn’t approve of school for girls. Boys should go everywhere and know everything, and girls should stay home and know nothing. All my brothers were sent to school, where I must say they did horribly. George and Gerald were incurably stupid and Thoby jumped out a window rather than write his prep. But I learned Greek! I learned Latin! I read every book in Father’s library, all on my own! And here I am, sentenced to Bedlam for it.

      LEONARD
      When you have seen the squalor that I have, you will realize that Dalingridge Hall is no punishment, Virginia.

      VIRGINIA
      It’s a punishment for me. Think of its owners, in their smug pride, rulers of the universe. How can you of all people, abide them? But they seduce even you with their privilege, luxury and glamor. What is the use of the finest education in the world if it teaches people not to hate force but to use it? Why can’t we learn the arts of understanding people’s lives and minds? All that the professions preach is worship of the sacred tree of property.

      LEONARD
      The doctors say you pushed yourself too hard.

      VIRGINIA
      Is that what you really think, that diving deep is dangerous? Go away, Leonard. I can’t bear to hear you lie to me.

    9. The Dalingridge Horror – a play by Alysse Aallyn

      Following her honeymoon Virginia Woolf attempted suicide and was sent to recover at her half-brother’s estate, Dalingridge Hall.

      CHARACTERS

      Virginia Woolf: a sensitive young artist having a breakdown

      Leonard Woolf: her new husband, nervous, forceful, an “outsider”

      Dr. Craig: bluff, elderly, genial, doctor to the wealthy

      Dr. Hyslop: a fashionable eugenicist

      Two orderlies: rough & tumble Cockneys ALF & BOB (orderlies & doctors played by the same actors)

      (Scene 1: Dalingridge Hall, An ostentatious faux British castle with all the updated luxurious mod-cons. A pair of white-coated orderlies maneuver a stretcher into a sickroom.)

      ALF
      Hold up a mo, let’s have a fag.

      BOB
      Buckle her in, and then we’ll have a fag.

      ALF
      Now that’s right stupid, that is. Tie her up, the job is done. No time for a fag then.

      BOB
      Oh, right. I get you. Where can we stow her? She’s heavy.

      ALF
      Tall as a man and strong like one, so they say. Prop her up over here. Careful, now, you got me shin!

      (They lean the stretcher against the wall facing the audience. Fumble with cigarette packs. ALF sits on the bed.)

      BOB
      I don’t like her looking at us.

      ALF
      Oh, she’s well out of it. Off to dreamland. Took the mickey out of her, they did.

      BOB
      So what’s up with this one? Trying on hats and ordering jewelry too much for her?

      ALF
      I heard it was her honeymoon what sank her!

      BOB
      Oh, Lord!

      (they both guffaw)

      BOB
      Wonder it doesn’t happen routine-like, what with the shock and all. I mean, she’s not used to seeing the farm animals getting frisky in the spring. She’s not walking to church with the village lads. She’s not sharing a bed with the brothers and sisters. So everything seems right and proper until the big night and then –

      ALF
      All hell breaks loose!

      (they laugh uproariously)

      BOB
      So, you seen the husband?

      ALF
      Oh yes, he was hanging about. Wringing his hands.

      BOB
      So what’s he look like, then? One of them muscle-bound rowing blues?

      ALF
      No, no, no. Nervy bloke. Just back from the East where he’d been sorting out the blacks.

      BOB
      Oh, Lord! Used to carrying a big stick is he?

      (they gasp, cough, laugh and fall about)

      VIRGINIA

      (groggily)

      What is this place? What vast forces of good and evil dropped me here? I burn, I shiver. I turn, I tumble, I am stretched. I am nailed like a stoat to the stable door.

      ALF
      Oh my jugs and jiggers, she’s coming out of it. Look here, you take that end.

      BOB
      Hold her up, hold her up!

      ALF
      She’s heavy, I’m telling you. They feed them women up like Strasbourg geese. Look sharp now.

      BOB
      There’s hell to pay if she’s not buckled in.

      (They get her on the bed. Much buckling and strapping.)

      VIRGINIA
      Who are you? Where am I? I have been diving through seas of horror to come up rotting in dirty ditchwater. Don’t touch me!

      (She starts struggling when it’s too late. She’s already buckled in. The men rest, gratified but exhausted.)

      ALF
      Nothing to fear, my lady. You’re all right now. You’re safe here at Dalingridge Hall.

      (His last words reverential)

      VIRGINIA
      Dalingridge Hall! Now the agony begins, horror has seized me with its fangs! I am turned, I am tumbled, I am stretched and everyone pursuing!

      (She starts screaming)

      ALF
      Hypo! We need a hypo!

      (ALF and BOB rush about panicked. Enter LEONARD. Exit orderlies.)

      LEONARD
      What is it? What’s happened?

      VIRGINIA
      Dalingridge Hall! They’ve taken me to Dalingridge Hall!

      LEONARD
      Virginia, your brother Sir George and his wife Lady Margaret have kindly lent us this splendid mansion. They’re staying up in London and have left it all to us. Up to date comfort. Plenty of servants – French chef – the food is magnificent. Eleven bathrooms! Spotless, hygienic, – the nurses are impressed I can tell you.

      VIRGINIA
      Now this monstrous ugliness is explained. I hear the crack of antlers as if the beasts of the forest are rearing, plunging among the thorns. One has pierced me. One has driven deep within me. You have left me to undergo this squalid humiliation served out like soup by greedy, casual scullions, coarse, ogling, brushing, destroying everything, smearing even our love with impure fingers. “What is this secret sin, this untold tale, that art cannot extract nor penance cleanse?” Don’t you understand? ALL DEATHS ARE ONE DEATH.

      LEONARD

      Would you like to see Sir George?

      VIRGINIA

      George! That obese alligator who used to roll me round my bed of an evening as if I were a minnow shut up in a tank with a frenzied whale. I would rather touch a decaying dogfish than that man’s body.

      LEONARD
      Hush, Virginia. George is an Adonis, a true man of the world, adored by great ladies and parliamentarians alike.

      VIRGINIA
      George has the eyes of a sow! Or is it an elephant? Sows look so much like elephants on the Duckworth side of the family. He used to fondle me so I couldn’t read my Greek. The very locusts deform the trees with their lusts.

      LEONARD
      George claims chastity until hi marriage. That’s more than I managed.

      VIRGINIA
      What liars men are! George was a pig, snuffling, rolling, grabbing, calling me Beloved. How he tortured both of us, me and Vanessa alike, Greek slaves in the harem promised him by Eton. He smothered us with caresses until Nessa told Dr. Savage and Dr. Savage made him stop. George told Dr. Savage he was only comforting us for the illness of our father.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, you’re romancing. Dr. Head says longing for adult attention creates a wish-fulfillment leading to ideas like these. He says the only way out is the talking cure.

      VIRGINIA
      So it’s wish fulfillment that has trapped me in George’s house? Dr. Head is another booby, Leonard. We were right to dismiss him. He knows nothing.

      (she grabs him)

      Don’t you understand that we are poured to the very edge of the abyss, Leonard, where we shall be broken together into nothingness and flames? Help, help! Get me out of this thing!

      LEONARD
      Dearest, you threatened to harm yourself, remember? You attempted suicide.

      VIRGINIA
      You left the veronal unlocked. I thought it was an invitation. My father praised the Duke of Bedford for having the courage to shoot himself. Surely you longed to be rid of me. I’m a bad bargain all around.

      LEONARD

      No Virginia, no. I love you. I moved heaven and earth to save you.

      VIRGINIA
      But I’m already dead, Leonard. I am certainly in hell. Fallen in a duck pond and strangling in duckweed! Quack, quack!

      LEONARD
      Virginia, why do you reduce me to madness too? If you could only comprehend how insane you sound.

      VIRGINIA
      You can’t think what a raging furnace it is to me, madness and doctors and being forced. I am bent like a tree under a remorseless gale. The crass blindness that poisons childhood still threatens bitter storms. Children will be trodden under. Speech is false. The demand to submit must always be returned with cries of pain, hate and rage because that’s all they understand.

      LEONARD
      You were violent, Virginia. You attacked your nurses. Don’t you remember?

      VIRGINIA
      I was defending myself. They attacked me! Forcing food down my throat. I will go down with my colors flying. Father used to say, “Face the inevitable with eyes wide open.”

      LEONARD
      You vomited on Lily and you struck Susan with a platter of cold meat. You must eat to gain weight, Virginia. Then the voices will subside, the doctors say. That’s why they’ve ordered a rest cure.

      VIRGINIA
      Those doctors! My life is a constant fight against doctors’ follies. That cretin, Savage? He’s not fit to be about. Borrowed from another century.

      LEONARD
      Four doctors and all of them in agreement. You know this, Virginia. You chose Head yourself – because Roger Fry recommended him – Vanessa suggested Craig and I found Hyslop.

      VIRGINIA
      Really, a doctor is worse than a husband. I’ve given up expecting doctors to listen to reason. If only those pigheaded sawbones could see I speak the sober truth without excuse! Alienists know absolutely nothing. Their vanity is as profound as their ignorance. What does their “treatment” amount to? It is all eating and drinking and being shut up in the dark, sequestered with lunatics.

      LEONARD
      The food here is delicious. May I bring you some?

      VIRGINIA
      Once when we travelled by train to St. Ives the lemonade spilled on the sandwiches and turned them into mush but Nurse still made us eat them and I was sick and then I was punished. Leonard, don’t you see that when I am weighted with food I can no longer make the moments flow together. I become an excreter, an excretion. No, of course you don’t see. You’re in a conspiracy, plotting against me. I see your grinning, I know your subterfuge, I hear you sneering behind my back.

      LEONARD
      Virginia, the people who love you are trying to decide what’s best for you. I’m trying to make the best decisions I can.

      VIRGINIA
      You’re punishing me for disappointing you. For being a bad wife.

      LEONARD
      When you’re well, you admit you’ve been mad.

      VIRGINIA
      My sister wanted to be rid of me. While she threw away our father’s possessions I lay in bed and heard the birds singing Greek.

      “What bird so sings, so yet does wail?
      Tis the ravished nightingale
      Jug, jug, jug, tereu she cries
      And still her woes at midnight rise.”

      LEONARD
      You’re hurting yourself with all this wild talk. No one can understand anything you say.

      VIRGINIA
      People know very well enough but it’s a secret. King Edward spewed the foulest possible language amongst the azaleas and yet they crowned him. “Swallow, my sister, O Sister Swallow,” I sing. If I become king of the lunatics shall I escape molestation? God, I wish I were dead. I will soon have to jump out of a window.

      LEONARD
      These violent oscillations, Virginia! If I could only get you to see! A whirlwind brings madness in its wake!

      VIRGINIA
      How long can any man love a woman without driving her mad? How long can I protect my clean visions from the odious masculine point of view – from the egotism of men? You crack my brain like a thrush cracks a snail – hammer, hammer, hammer.

      LEONARD
      I am not your enemy, Virginia.

      VIRGINIA
      Then who else is? Why shouldn’t I be frightened? I wanted to spend my life innocently indifferent among the trees and rivers but instead men expose themselves whenever I step out doors. I saw a woman pinned beneath a car and horses falling in the street. Outside our scullery a man cut his own throat. His jowls were whitened as codfish. The human face is hideous. What are you doing? Don’t touch me!

      LEONARD
      Trying to loosen your straps. You’re getting excited. Doctor!