Alysse Aallyn

Category: Creativity

  • Becoming a Goddess – the Goddess Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Goddess – The Meaning of Power

      To Become a Goddess Is to Accept Your Power.  But power is fearsome. We are all familiar with fires that escape control, rage-fueled emotional spirals, explosives that blow up their wielders and the dangers of endlessly escalating weaponry. Once the Goddess’ unleashes power, much can go wrong.

      The Power is there whether you claim it or not. To abjure your power is to deny your personhood – something women and marginalized groups have always been commanded to do.  If you try to get in touch with your personal power, won’t you tempt established Power to come after you? 

      Power is About More than Control and bending unfriendly circumstances to your desire and will. It is the process of fulfilling your natural growth pattern, becoming the person God always intended you to be. You have an immortal mandate but you must claim it.

      You Are Iconic –Goddesses invoke more than magic, they exemplify the inherent magic that is especially, irreplaceably Individuated Self. You have a power no one else has, incorporated in your being, your possibilities, your desires and your memories.  This takes a lifetime to accept because we all nervously want to be Someone Else and experience existence through the armor of Having only an Outside instead of just the very vulnerable Inside in which we all feel imprisoned. 

      Only Illegitimate Power Will Fear You –  The Universe that God created accepts a glorious new creature fulfilling their immortal mandate, while stolen power – the desire to crush, to control and to drain – will be forced to reveal itself in the fullness of its jealous evil.

      Dreams Will Instruct You –  Your dreams bring all these passions together as psychic poetry, elucidating what you think you want, what you hope you want and what you are afraid you want. The ultimate magic is to seize conscious control of this potent power source.

      Goddess Challenge – The challenge is to truly connect with others, reveal our world Inside, and avoid blasting their apparently impenetrable Outside with our terror, our longing and our fear. As the demons come after you, you will deploy the skills and techniques of dissembling, transmutation, transformation, mirror-magic and emotional mastery. The demons are hungry, pathetic in their eternal emptiness.

      Goddess Danger – We cannot take hostages and we must never become a hostage. Freedom is a fine line to walk. If we wish to reach out, we must treat those struggling to stand upright with respect and demand like respect for ourselves. Accept your “experiments”; do not fear them but allow them to take you where you need to go.

      Goddess Opportunities – There will be stumbles and terrors aplenty, also successes that LOOK like stumbles and terrors, but which we only realize on reflection were real leaps forward. This is why we must carefully assess our daily efforts without being harsh with ourselves. Speak gently to yourself as you would to a most beloved child. You are the Universe’s Own Beloved Child. It is not selfish to commit to this belief, it is simply placing the oxygen mask over your own face FIRST so that you can administer this life-saving force to others. Find someone with whom you can share your journey, without fear or judgment. This connection will teach us everything we need to know about how to connect with others.

      Fear & Trembling: Where would we ever get the courage to become goddess? Human history begins with an enormous fear of the Almighty or whatever is causing all that lightning, those earthquakes and striking everybody down. Killing small helpless, pretty things was meant to be flattering and propitiatory to this God (I don’t get it either.) Then Jesus arrived with a message about how God was really loving, generous and wanted the best for us. We know how that turned out.

      Becoming a Goddess: As children, we struggled to understand where we fit on the power spectrum. I tried killing a snake, and experimented with bullying other children the way I was bullied. I didn’t care for it. The only relief was in thinking about, researching and understanding the philosophical concepts about what was going on. My earliest researches, as for many children, were in astronomy and dinosaurs. The cold magnificence of the planets and the complete wipeout of the dinosaurs gave me a way to stand back from the immediate suffering of the schoolyard. I then moved on to the early Egyptians who tried to solve their problems through magic and art. The art was visually appealing and the magic was emotionally soothing.

      Pick Your Battles: I saw that most schoolyard fights were a reaction to the immediate suffering of pain or confusion, and that they magnified, rather than solved, those problems. There was a manifest holiness about this discovery. It rescued me from the torture of everyday life and elevated me to a plane where every other contributing thinker had already become immortalized.

      Study & Strategy: I read everything I could get my hands on in history and biography (research) and in fairy tales (magic). When I fell in love with the novels of C.S. Lewis and Rumer Godden, the world judged my taste good – when I discovered Agatha Christie, it did not – but it turned out everyone else was reading her too. Agatha is a short course on human nature (original sin) and a proponent of both the scientific and Socratic methods. She’s great training for a Goddess. I wrote it all down in my Training Journal.

      Claiming Your Power: By the time you’re a teenager you can see you have some power – some mental, some physical. The question is developing it and finding appropriate gurus. It is key to step out of the dominance/submission game.

      Keep Going – Recognize that you have been touched by the goddess and honor her by being grateful for the glorious gifts of life.

      Models & Mentors: “I did not deceive you. I permitted you to deceive yourself.” Agatha Christie

      “An Indian proverb says everyone is a house with four rooms – physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. Most of us live in one room or the other but if you don’t visit each room each day you are not a complete person.” – Rumer Godden

      “You are never too old to dream a new dream or set a new goal”

      – C. S. Lewis

      “You have to believe in yourself” – Sun Tzu

      #Haiku: Wyvern

      My power

      Beast bristles

      Fire;

      Eats critics

      Guards path

      Sleeps in my

      Mirror

    1. 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.