Alysse Aallyn

Category: Creativity

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

    Youth – Resilience –

      Right before my husband and I moved East, I applied to the MFA program at Brooklyn College and to my surprise, was accepted and offered a “fellowship”. I was given a stipend and a class to teach. When they asked where I’d graduated college, I left the form blank. In my Warrior Way, such things weren’t important. Apparently , they didn’t notice this until half-way through the semester. When they confronted me on it, I said I’d been to two colleges but hadn’t graduated from anywhere. With the insouciance of youth, I didn’t think it was such a big deal. After all, they were a college! I was there to take whatever classes were required to get their silly degree. If that meant I couldn’t teach classes, that was OK by me. These prep classes – how to write an essay – were Brooklyn’s way of weeding out undergrads who couldn’t hack the demands of college courses. Traumatic for teacher AND student. I wouldn’t miss giving them. I didn’t aspire to be a teacher, I wanted to be a writer. Before my record was discovered, my teaching was given very high marks. Afterwards – not so much.
      But the college felt it was a VERY big deal and kicked me out. My writing teacher offered to contest their decision, but I told him not to bother. I was realizing that I probably DID need a degree, that I probably DID need to go to college and that Brooklyn WASN’T the right place for me. (I didn’t like their writing program!)

      I was feeling the powerful pull of mysticism. One of the reasons I was so cavalier about universal requirements was that I felt the world they represented was an illusion. I could see the Real World invitingly glittering, unexplored, around me. I applied to undergrad at LaSalle College which also offered me a writing fellowship. Here I worked one on one with students to improve their writing and I wasn’t required to grade or even assess anyone. I took it.

      Fellows

      Choosing the perfect word
      Is about rendering the fatted thought;
      Blending ideas –
      Maximizing luck &
      Happenstance;
      Unbulking winged objects
      Capable of flight –
      Lifting you
      And maybe me –
      Out of the muck
      We all woke up in
      Just this morning.

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

      Ingenuity –

        I loved writing, I wanted to be a writer, so it certainly seemed that I should come up with a writing solution for my financial problems.


        “Gothic” novels were popular when I was in my 20’s; historical romances featuring aspirational heroines from the wrong side of the tracks who catch the eye of a moneyed, powerful man. I was a big reader of Victorian and Romantic literature which is loaded with fascinating true stories. Take Thomas Love Peacock, friend of Shelley and author of Nightmare Abbey and Crotchet Castle; a member of the landed gentry who saw a village girl sewing in a window and adopted her into his family for the rest of both their lives. Seemed like there was a story there! I also was a fan of ghost stories, especially Edith Wharton’s lovely After, where you see the ghost but only realize it afterwards. How about a ghost that adapted to the viewer? I had great fun writing this novel during a long, snowed in winter in Maine, sent queries to agents alphabetically and picked the first one who liked Devlyn and wanted to represent it (her name began with “C”.) I continued receiving rejections from lackadaisical agents long after the book was actually published, such is the state of the literary world.

        She sold the book relatively fast. I took the train from Washington DC to New York city and was taken out to lunch by my editor, who seemed likeable enough. She said I was so pretty, maybe they should make it a series. The money they offered wasn’t anything you could live on, but the print run was over 100,000 copies! That had to mean something.

        Then the publisher was sold. My editor was fired. My second editor and I did not hit it off. She seemed to dislike gothics and be embarrassed by them, she wanted to represent “memoirs.” I was stunned. Memoirs by definition are nonfiction. If she didn’t like fiction, what was she doing in this job?

        Not much, as it turned out. She was out, and I was offered a third editor, whose specialty was Westerns. I kid you not. Aren’t all “genres” really the same?

        I attempted to cultivate other editors. I attempted to cultivate other publishers. It was depressing how often sex appeared to be part of the deal. I was used to making my own choices in that area and I was not remotely turned on by any of these guys. Eeeeew, followed by “Ick.”

        I got a new agent. My Warrior ingenuity was playing out but soon, it would be “played out.” Because I was an artist. A key feature of Being a Warrior is not becoming a mercenary. Because that’s something different. I had things I wanted to write for me. I couldn’t explain what they were, because the only way to find out was to write them.

        #Haiku: Devlyn

        Ghosts mirror
        Fear, says brave
        Thea; this killer’s
        Motive laid bare –
        “Revenge”.

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

        Memory –


        After the bank took our house, we moved into one of the vacant condos in their project. My mother-in-law sued us with a federal injunction that accused us of damaging her tax credits.

          Throughout this horrible state of affairs my husband kept hoping his mother would come to her senses. I consulted a divorce attorney but realized that I didn’t want a different husband, I wanted a different life. I wanted to return to the past, when we were happy and everything was possible.

          At this time, my own family sold our summer place in Maine and I gained a sudden influx of cash. I decided to use it to get my husband away from his mother and into a new life. There was certainly the possibility that he would feel obligated to choose her, because of his “sunk costs” or just feel emotionally unable to leave his situation.

          Through the nine years of our marriage we had found joy and release visiting his family summer place, StormFall, in the Berkshires, and it seemed to make sense to choose somewhere near there. Hartford was the nearest big city and Connecticut seemed halcyon and clean; almost a paradise in comparison with Philadelphia. The children were six and two at the time; as soon as I received my psychology degree from LaSalle U we took off to explore the Hartford suburbs. Manchester, “Silk City”; “The City Of Village Charm” seemed just perfect. I bought a cute little new townhouse and enrolled the kids in school. It took Toss only a few months to join me. He hired a lawyer to extract him from his partnership and he found a wonderful job writing for the Connecticut Lawyer. He stayed there twenty-three years! We were a happy family again.

          NEW HOUSE

          The pregnant car disgorges
          Us. It’s winter.
          We beat our gills as light
          As hummingbirds.
          In a town of green schools and
          Greener parks this
          New built house
          Gapes and swells
          To draw us in.
          There’s a science room and
          A writing room and
          A TV room and
          Rooms for children.
          We sleep aloft for safety
          High above the thorny osiers
          Unseen by the demon’s angry outriders;
          Cherishing a safe word
          She’ll never guess; it’s
          Love.

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

          Dreams & Imagination

          Children can’t differentiate between what’s real and what’s imaginary. Neither can artists, because Mind Power is the only game in town. Classic Comics put out wonderfully evocative, absorbing versions of Robert Louis Stevenson’s adventures – The Black Arrow, Kidnapped and Treasure Island. His stories have psychological questions about who’s worthy of trust and who’s a victimizer that affect me powerfully to this day.

          I wrote and illustrated a story – Poor Left Out Harry – that my parents noisily admired and showed to all their friends. Someone sent it to a publisher (we never got it back.) I was very surprised by this because I intended it as a joke and was much more psychologically involved in making up new worlds, copying Narnia, in a complex mapmaking game my sister and I invented called Scrambles & Rocks. But then, as now, Officianados want you to “write what you know”, and as third daughter, I was uncomfortably familiar with being left out of things. I learned if you want to write about what interests YOU, you’re going to have to Resist adult promotion.

          #Haiku: Re-Cognition

          Confront
          Contemptible
          Quotidian
          Skewed,
          Re-Ignite. You’re
          Welcome

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

          Dissonance –

          Dissonance is created by facts that make each other impossible. They simply can’t both be true.
          Most people are made so uncomfortable by dissonance they pretend it doesn’t exist. But dissonance is the line that artists – and warriors – learn to walk.
          When I was little my first dissonant discovery was that highly desired things seemed to melt in my arms – I wanted getting them, but I didn’t want having them. The next dissonance was people saying they loved you but fleeing. I decided this dissonance was connected to the first; people like the idea of something much more than they like its reality. This was my first introduction to the importance of ideas.
          My warrior self began to emerge when I observed that people made elaborate rationales to retroactively justify their behavior and they wanted me to sign on to these. I thought it was easier to just admit that emotional states are fleeting – the pursuit of knowledge shows us that knowledge itself is amorphous, but discovered that my ideas were unpopular to say the least. In the meantime I wanted to strengthen my shell and explore ecstatic states. Looking at the past and trying to figure out what actually happened – turns out to be the most ecstatic state of all.

          Bird of Paradise

          I have seen the


          Souls caved in-


          Flashing hyaline –


          Wings upflung


          Tesserae shagreen;


          A flare-tailed phoenix


          Shuddering-


          Rip the orchid-breasted


          Dream


          Blood & lung –


          Incinerating


          Coils of lies


          Where love & truth –


          Diamorphate –


          Polychromize

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

          Synchronicity

          You could say I was a “success” at Circle in the Square, because I got the coveted ingénue part in the student production of Anouilh’s The Enchanted at The New Yorker Theatre. But I wasn’t happy. I thought I was as bad an actress as a dancer and it wasn’t gratifying because I wanted the story to be different. I wanted to be a writer! In fact, I felt I already WAS a writer. But I had absolutely nothing intelligent to say.

          How to get my inner development synchronized with my outer existence? In other words, develop a professional life. I did realize I needed a string of degrees – how coordinate that with my abhorrence of Higher Ed? Enroll at one of the Antioch College experimental schools – the one in Columbia, Md, for a degree in Creative Writing.

          Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk

          Femininity’s  Everests

          I climb them daily. Envy the crow’s

          wombless contentment

          As I stroll 

          among the old

          wrappers used

          condoms; joints rolled like French

          Letters used abused discarded.

          What the crow envies is my

          Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom

          Battering-ram jaw 

          baroque nose, the

           Greek depths through which

          My eyes record their wanderings

          Outside the convent wall,

          The stalls, the chained-up lambs,

          The  leaf-clogged swimming pools.

          First act, second act, third act

          Epilogue. 

          Number days by seeking out

          Life’s taproot;

          Marking ages not my own;

          Investing in some future;

          All unknowing what anyone will make

          Of these

          Portentous Pleiades:

          disparate sisters

          Me, myself and I.

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

          Education

          As soon as my education was my own to manage, I bollixed it up. My high school’s near total repudiation of Art left me seeking some kind of art school, but which? I was accepted at a School of the Arts in San Diego but depressed by the distance – a visit to my ex-boyfriend in Oregon and a visit to my handsy uncle in Hollywood had not endeared me to the West Coast. I auditioned at glitzy acting schools but had zero game and even less confidence so obviously THAT wasn’t going to work, so I started off modestly by interning at Southwark Theatre School (they gave me office work) and taking classes at the Philadelphia Academy of Dance. I was physically clumsy and slow and this was going to hold me back from any theatre career. I was very well developed in the left brain areas but my right brain appeared to be asleep. Although I was the worst in the class I did get better and I was amazed to be accepted by a prestigious theatre school in New York City. I got an apartment in New York city, signed up for classes at Martha Graham to prop up my confidence, and gave that a try.

          Act, Don’t Think

          Anxious about future

          I had no idea of living in the moment.

          Until was dancing

          The “present” wasn’t real.

          Releasing my

          Self

          Freed me from self-ness

          Becoming “eternal”

          In one second

          Was exactly

          The training I

          Required.

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

          Inspiration –

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

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

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

          PLAYING HIDE & SEEK IN THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART

          Life class is

          My game – you started it.

          Now I’m too obvious –

          Resembling

          This swollen storehouse where

          nothing is explained.

          We are all

          Open to interpretation.

          Outside the tiny window a single tree

          Flowers in its smug

          Delusion.

          This whiteness weights

          my soul. I long for the whick

          of teeth on lip; and bite

          the bended elbow where the blood 

          lies gathered. Take responsibility 

          For unfinished work.

          Unsignatured because

          It never finished school. 

          No blood here, lady


          You must have

           Imagined it – a

           Powder burn without 

          A bullet.

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

          Intuition –

          Intuition is the Warrior’s most critical tool. It starts in childhood when adults say something that sounds “not quite right” to the child. Something about their facial expression and the way they hold their body suggests they’re hoping you won’t inquire further, meaning they have no evidence or rationality for what they’re proposing. Sounds like they don’t quite believe it themselves and they’re just passing it to you, like an infection. It’s an infection you don’t want to get.

          Sometimes you ask further, other times you snoop around for evidence on your own. You can usually catch the Grownups talking earnestly in what they think is privacy about what you will buy and what are the consequences if they fail to persuade you.

          Reading is a helpful source of information. You can always find evidence that completely contradicts any BS du Jour.

          And right then, you’ve become a Warrior, because you’ve realized you need to rely on yourself. Not them.

          Breaking Free

          In retrospect we
          Forgive ourselves
          Imperfect inspirations
          Unbecoming intuitions
          Seeing how high we flew;
          Unaltered
          Compared to many others
          Scraping by along the
          Substrate;
          Just a memory of cloud’s
          Enough
          To settle into sunset
          Pillowed into selfhood;
          “I heard
          I saw
          I
          Flew”

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

          The Life Force

          We teenagers at our co-ed religious boarding school wanted to mate. This desire was more powerful than the faculty, it was more powerful than anything. They were always digging us out of bushes, rescuing us from ponds, chasing us out of the woods. We were lustfully ablaze. They kept trying to demand we give an account of ourselves but reason had been bypassed – we were in the grip of an eternal force powering the planet, perpetuating our kind.

          I knew that force again when I turned 29 years old. Suddenly I wanted to have a child. There were men on the scene – but they were a shiftless crew of can’t-bes, don’t-bes, and wanna-bes. Warriors don’t take No for an answer. I had to be able to do better than that, but my parents assured me that because of my career of exposing My Body For Profit, no decent man would have me.

          But suddenly High School Boyfriend showed up, a working journalist, half-way through law school, interning for Ralph Nader. On our first meeting he told me he’d never loved anyone but me.

          Hey, I thought. This could work.

          Your Biological Time’s Up

          This crowded world could not make do


          without your life;


          Summoned up, you surged


          you split the crust


          Shocked, I shuddered in my sheaves


          as you uncored


          Loosened my skin as we 


          Unmerged. 

          We travelled to the rim;


          Your fragrant cell became


          a soul unsheathed.


          From my rind’s brim


          you blinkered on the world


          wondering at the fuss.


          We are you and yet


          You are not us.

          Committed to a course beyond our love –


          a forfeit tithe;


          gentle as a snake and


          wiser than a dove;


          As stars consume their fuel


          you were birthed to speed our lives.

          Against the odds we found you


          You found us


          against the odds.


          Consecrated to the great transformer 


          We love like mothers


          We create like gods.