Alysse Aallyn

Category: #Mysteries

  • Queen of Swords – the Tarot Play by Alysse Aallyn

    WHITNEY

    (Getting up her nerve…calling after CHARMAYNE …too late)

    Like you speak French!

    (Goes to sit disconsolately on a boulder.)

    This is MY story and I’m not letting her tell it.

    (A beachily dressed;  closely shaved man with a metal detector comes up the beach slowly.  Investigating.)

    WHITNEY

    Hey!  Don’t you know this is private property?

    EIGHT

    Only to the waterline.  No one owns the ocean.  Which means it belongs to everyone. This your place?

    WHITNEY

    No.  Belongs to my stepmother.  The place she sold to buy this one was the house I grew up in.

    EIGHT

    So now you’re free.  Like me.

    WHITNEY

    (Watches him work)

    Who are you?  What are you doing?

    EIGHT

    I’m a beachcomber and a treasure hunter. Name’s Eight.  Like Pieces of Eight.

    WHITNEY

    Is that what you find?

    EIGHT

    I find everything eventually.  Look at this.

    (She comes closer)

    WHITNEY

    What is it?

    EIGHT

    Prehistoric shark’s tooth.

    WHITNEY

    Looks like an arrowhead.

    EIGHT

    They could have used it for that.  You want it?

    (She shrinks from contact)

    WHITNEY

    I don’t know.  What would I do with it?

    EIGHT

    (Lifts his arm)

    Treasure seekers help other treasure seekers. It’s the beachcomber’s code.  Otherwise it goes back to the sea.

    WHITNEY

    Then I’ll take it.

    (Turns it over in her hands.)

    I wish it was a magic charm.

    EIGHT

    Really?  Why’s that?

    WHITNEY

    I need magic to fight her.

    (Gesticulates at house and whispers)

    She’s a demon.

    EIGHT

    You mean demonic?  Or an actual demon?

    WHITNEY

    I mean an actual demon.  Like from another planet.

    EIGHT

    Most demons are homegrown.

    WHITNEY

    This one cultivates magic.  Reads Tarot.  Calls herself The Queen of Swords.

    EIGHT

    That’s nothing but a pack of cards. No magic there.

    WHITNEY

    She murdered my father.  I know it.

    (A beat. Game change.)

    EIGHT

    You sure of that?

    WHITNEY

    Absolutely certain.  He had this neurological condition, and he hired her to be his attendant. She wasn’t qualified – not at all.  He had me sit in the interviews since I lived there too.  I could see how taken with her he was.  I begged him not to do it but –

    (she shrugs sadly)

    EIGHT

    Let me guess.  She was a sight for sore eyes.

    WHITNEY

    (Nodding)

    Yeah.  But so fake, though!  Fake everything: hair, breasts, accent.  Fake résumé, even.  But he didn’t want to see through her.  He just didn’t care.

    EIGHT

    I get it. He wanted to take his own path to health.

    WHITNEY

    He wanted to grab for the gusto. As soon as they were married –

    (Slits her own throat with a finger.)

    EIGHT

    Any idea how she did it?

    WHITNEY

    Smothering? Drugs?  It wouldn’t have been hard. She cremated him right away and there wasn’t even an autopsy.

    EIGHT

    Did you tell anybody?

    WHITNEY

    I told everybody. But she has them all under her spell. People were relieved he was gone!  Less trouble for everybody.  Even my sisters who – neither of them can stand Charmayne  – said, “Well, at least he died happy!” I was the only one who even missed him.  He was already old when we were born, you see. Darby – that’s my oldest sister – said – “Oh, he’d been gone a long time already.  Can’t you see that?” And McKenzie – she’s the other one – said – “Everyone dies “unnaturally” nowadays.  That’s what death is.” I was the only one who thought it was wrong. My dad said the only education worth having is learning to tell right from wrong.

    EIGHT

    I get it.  You thirst after righteousness.

    WHITNEY

    Justice.  Justice is what I want. People keep telling me it doesn’t exist.

    EIGHT

    Are you certain it’s not revenge you’re looking for?

    WHITNEY

    Well, that would be nice too.  I mean, she makes me so mad. Don’t you feel it?  Wouldn’t anyone? But justice is what I’ll settle for.

    EIGHT

    It’s a bad situation.

    WHITNEY

    You don’t know what a relief it is to have someone actually listen to me. I even – one day – I saw him.

    EIGHT

    You saw him? Your father’s – ghost?

    WHITNEY

    (Nodding vigorously)

    I did.

    EIGHT

    Was he all about vengeance?

    WHITNEY

    He didn’t speak.

    (Tears up.)

    He just showed up in my room at college – probably the same moment she was killing him – and looked at me so sadly.  I knew it was some kind of vision because he was his younger self  – from before he had his stroke.  I thought he was angry at me.  Going away to school and leaving him alone with Charmayne – maybe I let him down.

    EIGHT

    Hey, you told him not to hire her.  I mean, you were just a kid!   What could you do?

    WHITNEY

    He admired people who “spoke truth to power”.  He wanted me to be self-sufficient, use logic and hone my own instincts.  She was awful to him!  She made him beg for water.  I saw it.

    EIGHT

    Sounds like a demon all right.

    WHITNEY

    “Withholding hydration” they call it. I should have protected him, the way he always protected me. He said I was his intellectual heir.

    EIGHT

    Are we talking money?

    WHITNEY

    No, I don’t mean that.  We already had trust funds and things.  What I mean is, he told me I was like him, that I had the same kind of mind. He said knowledge is everything and you have to cultivate a bullshit detector. Even though I was the youngest – me and my sisters have different mothers – he told everyone only I was fit to stand in his shoes.

    EIGHT

    Well, I’m starting to see why your sisters might not want to cooperate.

    WHITNEY

    People have to stand up for what they believe!

    (Very earnestly.)

                                                    EIGHT

    You blush when you’re angry.

                                                    WHITNEY

    I blush whenever there’s another person in the room.  But what do you think I should do?   I’m scared of her.  She threatened me.

    EIGHT

    How?

    WHITNEY

    She said I’m nothing and she created everything.  She’ll send me back into the darkness.  She wants to “tell my fortune” so she can predict all the terrible things that are going to happen to me.  When she calls herself Queen of Swords, she tries to sound like she’s Master of the Universe.

    EIGHT

    Sounds like a con artist to me. They just feel around for anything someone will believe. Don’t let her get the drop on you. 

                                                    WHITNEY

    But what if those cards tell the future?

                                                    EIGHT

    Tarot’s just another dead language, Whitney. You could learn it if you really wanted to. Language shapes how people think.

    (Taps his head)

    Don’t meet her on her turf. Predators like their prey frozen.  And confused.

    WHITNEY

    How did you know my name?

    EIGHT

    I hang around.  I hear things.

    WHITNEY

    So, you’re an eavesdropper.

    EIGHT

    Treasure seekers are serendipitous. We pick up what we can find.

    WHITNEY

    Well, you can’t pick me up.

    EIGHT

    (Still working his stretch of beach)

    I wouldn’t dream of it.

    WHITNEY

    (not thrilled to hear this)

    But what if she really is magic? It seems that way sometimes.  I don’t know how to stand up to her.  

    EIGHT

    Don’t sideline yourself so quick. You’re here, aren’t you? A person who can see the dead can do anything. Magic’s a game and anyone can play.  Games are about rule-making – about control – gaining advantage on somebody, Whit.

    WHITNEY

    My father said never to play a game that’s rigged.

    EIGHT

    What if its rigged in your favor?  And this one is. You know what happens to murderers?

    WHITNEY

    I’m hoping they get caught.

    EIGHT

    The truth will out.

    WHITNEY

    (Looking nervously up at the house)

    Charmayne thinks she’s indestructible.

    EIGHT

    Wow.  Sounds like a dare. I’m partial to dares myself.

    WHITNEY

    She says anything anybody tries to do to her comes back on them a million times. That it’s pointless to fight her.  But I’m not giving up. You see why (looks at the tooth) I might need all the magic I can get?

    EIGHT

    Make her play your game. 

    WHITNEY

    I’d love to see that!  What do I do?  Exactly?

    EIGHT

    Today’s your lucky day.  I just happen to know some magic.

    WHITNEY

    Is that part of being a treasure seeker?

    EIGHT

    Sure. First, you master the elements. That’s way bigger magic than flipping cards and cutting off old men’s hydration.

    WHITNEY

    (Skeptical)

    So how’d you that?

    EIGHT

    I’ve been swept out to sea. I’ve been buried in sand and I’ve been frozen in snow.

    WHITNEY

    We’re going to need way bigger magic than that.

    EIGHT

    See this mark on the top of my head?

    WHITNEY

    (Rubbing his head)

    Looks like scars!  Where did they come from?

    EIGHT

    I had a demon of my own. Once.

    WHITNEY

    You did?

    EIGHT

    Yeah, and he was hard to destroy.  Took a piece out of me, I can tell you.  He marked me right here.

    WHITNEY

    (Very hopeful)

    Did you mark him?

    EIGHT

    I told you I destroyed him. And then I marked myself.

    (Opens his Hawaiian shirt to show tattoo)

    WHITNEY

    (Reading)

    “Be not Afraid.”  How’s that help anything?

    EIGHT

    It’s a reminder.

    WHITNEY

    But you defeated him?

    EIGHT

    Sure did.  He’s locked in a box and he’ll never get out. That’s what sent me wandering.

    WHITNEY

    How come?

    EIGHT

    Because every action produces an opposite reaction.  He’s static, I’m in motion.  Searching.

    WHITNEY

    But if he’s still alive…can’t he still hurt you?

    EIGHT

    No.  He’s lost all his power.  But I did have to take control.  And I had to work on setting myself free.

    WHITNEY

    (Flouncing down onto the beach)

    I’d rather just kill her.  Serve her right.

    EIGHT

    No, no; don’t give her that. That’s what she wants.

    WHITNEY

    Trust me, that is NOT what she WANTS.

    EIGHT

    (Nodding vigorously)

    Trust ME, it is.  She’s hoping to turn you into HER.  She’d have a new young life, a new young body.  I’m not sure anyone could rescue you then.

    WHITNEY

    So tell me what you think I should I do.

    EIGHT

    Play it by the Bible.  You’ve got to call a demon by its name.

    WHITNEY

    (Unimpressed)

    Really? The Bible?  That’s all you’ve got?

    EIGHT

    Hey, the Bible’s full of demons.

    WHITNEY

    So how do I learn her name? Tell me.

    EIGHT

    You said she had a fake everything. If that fake résumé still exists.  I’d start there.

    WHITNEY

    (Arms crossed)

    She probably destroyed every copy.  Then what?

    EIGHT

    Don’t be a “yes, but”.  You know she’s got secrets.  The past’s the best predictor of the future. Find out her past and make sure she knows you know.  Believe me, suddenly she’ll find you the most interesting person on the planet.

    WHITNEY

    Why’s that?

    EIGHT

    Because here’s the secret.  Demons long to be revealed.   If she invites you to dance –

    (Does a little dance, waltzing the metal detector)

    Dance with her.  Then – suddenly, at the time of your choosing you – step aside.

    WHITNEY

    Step aside?

    EIGHT

    (Involving her in his dance)

    Step aside. Let her own momentum bring her down.

    WHITNEY

    (Very frustrated, dancing like she has two left feet)

    I‘ll never get it.

    EIGHT

    First you have to tell your own fortune. Then you tell hers.

    (Heads off down the beach while she’s thinking about it)

    WHITNEY

    She’ll try to put ideas in my head!

    EIGHT

    But if she’s a demon, your ideas are stronger than her ideas.

    WHITNEY

    You don’t know how persuasive she can be.

    EIGHT

    (From the end of the beach)

    Oh, I know.

    WHITNEY

    Wait!  Where are you going?

    EIGHT

    I’ve got to get moving.  I only found one treasure here.

    WHITNEY

    And you gave it away.

    EIGHT

    (Looking at her meaningfully)

    That’s not the one I mean.

    (Resumes his quest)

    WHITNEY

    Wait, wait!  Give me your phone number!

    (Pulls out her phone)

    EIGHT

     I don’t use those things. 

    WHITNEY

    But where can I find you? When will I see you again?

    EIGHT

    Don’t worry.  I’m always around. I like this beach.

    (Exits)

  • Writing a novel for class – a memoir by Alysse Aallyn

    THE PINCH OF DEATH – Writing a novel for class

    After my fiancé graduated law school in Kentucky, we came East – where our families lived – to get married. I applied to Brooklyn College for the MFA program and was hired as a writing fellow. What followed was an experience so discouraging I can well understand why graduate students are at a high risk of suicide.

    First, there’s the contrast between the high prestige of the position and the pitiable pay. You could literally make more money (and spend the same amount of time) combing the subway for lost change.

    Next, there’s the “job” they want you to do, which is to prepare seriously undereducated freshman to write an essay justifying their admission into the hallowed world of academe.

    I had fun developing my own syllabus, which was basically teaching critical thinking in the most fun way I could possibly imagine. A teacher “reviewer” who came to watch the class wrote me a rave review – I don’t think anyone in my life has ever praised me as much as he did. I still cherish that evaluation. But don’t get excited – the second guy (months later) disparaged me so much that if you add the two reviews together I think you’d have to give me a sad C-. But at that point, They Knew About Me – that I had no college degree -and so they were trying to get rid of me. Really, you can’t blame them – how could I prepare students to get something I didn’t have myself? And what – you may ask – was wrong with MY thinking and reasoning powers that I had not expected this?

    The truth is, I had flouted “rules” all my life – they always seemed ridiculous – and because I was a “rara avis” I usually got away with it. But clearly, this could not continue. Much chastened by my brush with the universe (which represented itself as “sanity”) I did go ahead and get a BA degree in psychology from LaSalle. I even got half a masters under my belt from Springfield College until I saw that it was useless.

    But back to Brooklyn. There were classes I took, of course, in WRITING – which was my absorbing interest and passion. I kept the fact that I had actually published a novel a secret because the class expressed such a tragic belief that being published was their deepest desire and most desperate and holy quest. I knew that it was the writing of the book itself – finding the subject AND the expression that was your spiritual release into the world – that was the most important absorbing and exciting. My first book was written to specifications – what was “popular” – under the ingenuous theory that I would develop important publishing relationships (my editor lost her job, my company bought out and revamped.) You could hardly brag about an experience like that.

    For my class on the Novel I decided to write a novel. I thought it would be fun. If you wrote a chapter every week you would have a novel at the end.

    One of my classmates was an ex-nun – a most interesting person – whose experiences strongly affected me. I effortlessly adapted her into my heroine, because my book was a mystery. Surely these are the easiest to write – they must evolve according to a plan. You have to introduce the problem, then the suspects, give clues, and make the reader care about the outcome. I had an idea it would be less emotional than my first book, which got bogged down into a bizarre love story about a fatherless girl pathetically seeking mentorship. THIS book would be all business.

    I got such massive pushback from the class I’m kind of surprised I went through with it – but I was enjoying the writing and the characters were alive to me. “Criticism” in class was students laboriously reading each others’ work, describing its emotional effect on them and describing different ways things could be said. The forward motion of a novel – the sweep, the assumption of power – was thereby utterly dissipated. Everyone just rewrote the first chapters of different books endlessly. So it shouldn’t have been called “Novel Writing”, it should have been called “Paragraph Writing” – a class I wouldn’t take.

    This teacher and I butted heads on all kinds of issues. First off, he said great writing couldn’t have a “happy ending.” I saw his point but I thought it shallow. Surely completion of a quest – solving a mystery – is an enormous relief. But mysteries aren’t serious writing, he insisted. (Uh oh. Since I was engaged on one.) Well, what about the Odyssey? Jane Austen? {Probably Tom Jones, if I could recall the ending.)

    MODERN literature!! He insisted. We can’t have happy endings anymore!

    That was when I realized the whole thing was bogus. If I was bogus, they were even more bogus. I was eight months’ pregnant at the time and this man’s feeble philosophy defied the spinning of the planets, the arrival of spring, the creation of Life itself. What a silly fellow.

    I finished Pinch of Death, and still reread it with pleasure, A very charming book.

  • The Crimes of Woody Allen – a film review by Alysse Aallyn

    THE CRIMES OF WOODY ALLEN

    This film, probably his last, is not the movie to rescue the 88 year old filmmaker but it certainly marks an advance in his artistic life. Throughout his career, Allen has leveraged an apparently traumatically low self-esteem, inviting us to laugh at the hoops society forces ordinarily inadequate people to jump through for admiration, employment, companionship & love.

    As he matured, he began implying that society itself is a crime and we are its victims (Shadow & Fog, Crimes & Misdemeanors, Hollywood Ending, Match Point, Broadway Danny Rose, Cassandra’s Dream, Interiors, Irrational Man, Scoop, Manhattan Murder Mystery, Bullets Over Broadway.)

    I’ve come to believe he’s our Marcel Proust – sharply attuned to the pathos and ambition of our social signaling and teasing us with scandalous gossip about how far some of us might be willing to take our desperate impostures. What will we do to get what we want and what might we do when challenged?

    Throughout his career, he has presented beautiful young women as the ultimate desirable acquisition of the good life; otherworldly angels whose psyches are completely closed to him, but whose bodies he hopes to subjugate.

    Coup de Chance offers one of these mysterious creatures as its protagonist, a beautiful gallery worker “rescued” from her life with a shiftless musician by a wealthy, jealous man terrified of losing her. Yet she is bored, bored, BORED by his dull existence of object acquisition and gourmet travel and secretly falls for a handsome, exciting young man with a head full of dreams.

    This film was banned from Cannes as a show of solidarity with the credible accusations of sexual impropriety by Allen’s daughter, whose story as an adult and a child, has never varied. The persona who comes across in Allen’s stories is inquisitive and clueless and needy enough to have done what he is accused of, yet most of us will never know the truth. Creator of his own worst fears, he triggered their realization. “Exposed”, discredited and cast out; still he is making films.

    Artists we can unreservedly admire as human beings are rare, Picasso and Tolstoy and Byron, for example, displayed outrageously cruel, downright illegal behavior for all to see. But it’s quite possible that the sinner’s story is always the more interesting one from the perspective of our own humdrum lives. Certainly no one knows crime as intimately as a criminal.

    Unlike the brilliant Match Point, the intensely immersive Cassandra’s Dream, the creepy Crimes & Misdemeanors and the tour de force Irrational Man, Coup de Chance’s plot is a mere story board, lacking the three-dimensional richness this collaborative art usually supplies, but it closes with Allen’s final gift to us, the end philosophy of his lifetime of restless questing. His last word? That each of us is a lucky miracle and that life itself is a miracle we must learn to revel in and appreciate.

  • Film Review – The Three Faces of Alfred Hitchcock

    APOLOGY FROM ALYSSE – Somehow the first version of this came out in Plaintext! Sorry.

    Film Review: Spellbound

                A Viennese psychiatrist in this movie demands a dream “the more cock-eyed, the better” and Hitchcock obliges with this wildly uneven picture offering us Alfred at is best and worst. This film about psychoanalysis is schizy; pretentious, illogical, childish and afraid of its own emotions. Unfortunately it starts with an awkward, talky beginning in which misogynist doctors accuse Ingrid Bergman (for the first time in her life, I’m sure) of being a “glacier” who’s uninterested in men.

                No one heats up a screen like Ingrid Bergman, shooting smoke and fire in all directions from the get-go and it will surprise nobody to find out she and Gregory Peck conducted a hot affair during filming. 

                Dr. Constance Petersen is a psychoanalyst at an upscale Vermont looney bin full of nymphos and weirdos, galvanized by the arrival of Gregory Peck as the new doctor in charge and he’s just as worked up about her. It doesn’t even faze her to discover that he’s an impostor, the real Dr. Edwardes is missing and her swain is accused of his murder.

                The film begins to gather speed as the couple goes on the run together with Connie telling everyone they’re on their honeymoon.  She takes the amnesiac to her training psychotherapist’s house in Rochester where she promises to “cure” him.

                Her teacher tells her that “love smitten analysts playing dream detectives” make “the best patients” but she is making good progress breaking down Peck’s resistance when the police show up and the couple flees to a ski resort called “Gabriel Valley”. 

                The famous dream sequence designed by Salvador Dali is pretty interesting – gamblers in a club decorated with eyes, a man tumbling down a rooftop and a masked man laughing behind a chimney brandishes a wheel.  Constance interprets this as her boss murdering Edwardes on a ski vacation to prevent the younger man from replacing him and framing her lover for the crime.

                When she tells this discovery to her boss he threatens her with the very same gun, but she faces him down and he shoots himself instead. Seen from the killer’s perspective the gun fires directly at the screen.

                Film ends with Constance Petersen and her Big “100% Cured” male making out at the train station. To get to this point Hitchcock had to battle a sappy film score, (Bernard Hermann wasn’t available), a bossy, clueless, tone deaf producer (David O. Selznick) and a woman-hating screenwriter (Ben Hecht) to ignite a modicum of his signature passion and suspense. At least it was a huge hit and broke all records. What a film this could have been without the frozen art direction, the awkward rear projection and the hysterical film censors. Someone should definitely take another stab at it.

  • Secrets of the Self – Second Book Contract by Alysse Aallyn

    My second book contract was a two-book contract. I had long been working on a novel, Model Prisoner, that was based largely on the true crime story described in Barthel’s Death in California , where a man murdered his best friend and kidnapped the friend’s wife. I was working through the issues created when women are forced to cooperate with dangerous men. As often happens, the characters hijacked the story. The relationship between the two men became more and more important – my poor heroine was just a marker of success or loss. In a lucky flash of intuition, I realized the mythic proportions of what I was dealing with – my protagonist became Persephone, uncomfortably contended over by two Lords of Darkness.

    Another character pushed his way onstage – Persey’s dog, Digger. Because Persey loved him, he was an object of jealousy by the Lords of Darkness, who wanted her all to themselves. This evoked the legends around domesticating wild creatures into household pets and the story became Woman Into Wolf.

    When I was ready to submit the novel I discovered my publisher Bridgeworks had been bought by another publisher, Rowman & Littlefield, so I sent it to them and prepared myself for the uncomfortable weeks long wait for consideration lowly authors are subjected to. A few weeks later I heard from my old editor (who I’d dedicated my second novel to!) that Rowman & Littlefield in fact had no editorial department, and so my contract was essentially null and void. I submitted Woman Into Wolf to my old editor to see if she had any good ideas about what I should do next. She suggested I de-emphasize one of the characters (the Bird Lady) and play down Persey’s past life – I took all her suggestions. But when I sent her the revised manuscript I discovered she had forgotten all about it and wanted me to tell her how the novel USED to be!

    At that point I lost faith in her. My trusty Girl Focus Group (my daughter’s friends) loved the book, and I feared further monkeying around might break something important! It seemed a better idea to jut publish the thing myself. And the reviews bore me out.

    …a thrill-ride, unique and highly recommended reading.” –Entrepreneur.com


    “deceit, rape, fertility, imprisonment and a mother’s grief…as each piece of the tightly coiled fiction was loosed I waited for the revelation to come…she couldn’t imagine the extent of the deception until it was spelled out. Neither could I.” – MyShelf.com

    “one of the most unusual mysteries I have ever read…I loved reading Woman Into Wolf … kept me on the edge of my seat right through the end…I highly recommend this novel to fans of crime mysteries that also
    enjoy some extra spice in their stories.” – Readerviews.com

    “a very fine psychological thriller…
    the characters in this book are as bright
    as crystal and as sharp as shattered glass.
    Aallyn not only can describe them to a
    neo-noun, she can make them speak
    true to those characters.
    Quite a talent…a novel every bit as worthy as
    her first.” –ArmchairInterviews.com

    “Satisfying as hell.” – Quoth the Raven

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Homing – Forgiveness:

    If This Card Chooses You – Do you need to forgive? Or be forgiven? Most of us require both! Ask your dreams. Do you dream of home? Sometimes we dream of a home that no longer exists, or never existed. “Home” represents the state of psychic absolution where all mistakes are forgiven and forgotten.

    Warriors Create The Future – We commit to the ultimate compassion that we are all in this together. Jesus suggests that understanding doesn’t arrive until we learn to be the “forgivers”. Obviously, this means we must learn – somehow – to forgive ourselves.

    Warriors Create Heaven – Such forgiveness helps us achieve the state of spiritual lightness that allows a warrior to float through time, history, even the universe.

    Warriors Are At Home In the World – What’s your “dream home”? A warrior’s training emphasizes understanding and managing the fragility of the human body and the objective world, and accepting our healing and unifying mandate. Once we have scoped out the terrain and the inhabitants, Warriors are at “home” anywhere.

    Warriors are About Justice – But not the kind that leaves more brokenness behind. Warriors achievements and physical selves display the triumph of thought, will and love.

    What Does It Mean to “Start Over”? – We don’t wish to be free of “consequences”. We want to learn and grow from our mistakes but not be humiliated and punished for them. Pretending they didn’t happen doesn’t free us. Seeing our mistakes as moves in a dance we are all contributing to frees us from painful rumination and helps escape and explain the prison of blame. “I did this because you –“… Human interactions are a tar-pit in which we trap and tar ourselves. We realize we need to forgive every chain in the event pattern if we are ever to have any peace.

    It’s All About You – Robert Frost defines “home” as a place where, when you show up, they have to take you in. Defining “they” defines your group, your original home. Philosophy may provide an answer. Buddhists see history as a circle, Christians as a spiral. The question for Christians is, which direction is the spiral headed and do we have time to learn what we need to know before there’s a cataclysm? Can you define the mess we’re in and intuit your behavioral contribution? Is it possible to detach from the mess? In what group – or even in what “moment” can you detach from the mess?

    Warriors’ Danger – We can’t afford to get mixed up about right and wrong. “By their fruits shall you know them.” Think it through. One avenue leads to health, dignity and growth; the other leads in the opposite direction. Don’t make the mistake of “fundamental attribution error”. The threat is NOT coming from inside the house. Martin Luther King Jr. made the wise comment that our specific brand of capitalism tends toward is “socialism for the rich and rugged individualism for the rest of us.” It certainly suits corporations to lecture their employees on building a better world without incorporating any of those ideas into the bigger picture, where we have no control and they demand absolute freedom.

    What Is The Bigger Picture? Health and safety for all living things to achieve their growth potential as part of a harmonious, non-exploitative whole. It is key that our resistance – which is necessary and life-giving – not embitter us.

    Forgiveness Is Our Armor – Forgiveness doesn’t require ignoring the past or accepting bad behavior. It’s part of an interaction where forgiveness is a request, not a demand. Usually there is a recognition of fault or an expression of remorse: “I’ll never do that again!” When the requesting party instead seeks permission for the suffering to continue, “I can’t change – that’s the way I am” — that’ a different request. “Home” is not re-created that way. Hell is. Your opportunity is to point this out – if necessary, (because of safety) only to yourself. “If I’m not willing to try giving up my participation in this suffering because I think I’m not able to, then this pattern will continually get worse.” Time to construct a better – more intelligent map.

    Models & Mentors – “It’s not an easy journey to get to a place where you forgive people. But it’s a powerful place, because it frees you” – Tyler Perry

    “The practice of forgiveness is our most important contribution to the healing of the world” – Marianne Williamson

    “The weak can’t forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong” – Mahatma Gandhi

    “To forgive one another, we must understand one another” – Emma Goldman

    “Forgiveness does not exonerate the perpetrator. It liberates the victim. It’s a gift you give yourself” – T.D. Jakes

    #Haiku: Forgiveness

    Returning home with
    Newborn eyes
    Strong hands
    Fresh translations
    Future’s past

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Labyrinth – Complexity:

    If This Card Chooses You – Is our brain’s labyrinth powerful enough to solve the universe’s complexity? Each of us experiences slow-growing difficulties just heaving from infancy into psychic awareness. How are we going to figure out the space-time continuum? In order to tackle these vast problems we have to get some sense of their dimensions.

    Are You Dreaming of the Impossible? Last night I dreamed of being at a resort where people were able to run across the top of the ocean playing a curling game – but they had to move fast. I couldn’t figure out what kept their feet above the waves. Later it was my job to provide lunch but the food at the little store was appalling. Very little bread, all stale – some weird canned vegetables, no protein other than some very suspect cheese. I was so relieved to wake up!

    Don’t Try This Alone – Life is very complex. We are bombarded with daily reminders that many of its problems are too big for our tiny brains to tackle alone. We need help deconstructing and deciphering the maze – we require the assistance of legions of engineers, mathematicians, philosophers and artists – living and dead. Our mythic history is nothing but re-runs of: Tiny Human Confronts Huge Universe.

    Is Your God Too Small? – We have a regrettable tendency to try to solve problems by reducing them to the size of our individual brains. Don’t. There’s no shame in admitting the problem is of awe-inspiring size; there’s no shame in requesting help. But the concept of God must be of something mightier than ourselves, our problems, even bigger than space and time.

    Warriors Are Puzzle Solvers– There is a way out of this labyrinth. You can follow string, leave breadcrumbs, mark walls, climb higher to get a birds’ eye view. You can call in a favor, study history, learn a skill, consult experts, request advice, find out what’s worked in the past. My favorite cartoon shows a goat calmly eating his way through maze walls. The key, problem solvers tell you, is not to panic. Whole years of primary education are devoted to getting you to sit down, breathe calmly and focus on the problem. Remember what you have been taught. Recall your goals.

    Warrior Challenge – It is not necessary to solve the entire problem to solve a problem. Even a blind rat can get through a maze one step at a time. Algebra came into being to manipulate unknowns. Guessing at the existence of x using the behavior of surrounding particles allows us to see without eyes. Many “hacks” are clever, and certain innovators have a gift for adaptation and reconfiguration. We can always use help. We can always form teams. Repeat after me: “All my problems have some solution.” Often the solution is viewing the “problem” differently. Maybe it isn’t a problem. Maybe it’s an opportunity.

    Warrior Danger – Primary dangers are panic (inability to think) and defeatist thinking (lack of imagination). The lovely movie The Martian shows a scientist literally conquering the impossible. If you ”give up”, you never get there, but retreat, reconstitution, changing training regimens and getting help are NOT giving up. Promoting your physical health and “Sleeping on it” are always good advice, as is viewing the difficulty from some other angle or changing the definitions of the entities considered.

    Warrior Opportunity – Key to success is fostering excitement about challenges. Our high school used to dump couples in the countryside at night and give a prize to the first couple who found their way home! (Following roads and train tracks always a good idea.) Scavenger hunts and orienteering cover much the same territory. The fact that a problem is difficult only makes it more fun. Ask chess players.

    Models & Mentors – “The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity” – Douglas Horton

    “The labyrinth combines walking and thinking to open your power of imaginative perception” – Lauren Artress

    “Willingness to be puzzled is a valuable trait to cultivate” – Noam Chomsky

    “In a maze, find the center, in a labyrinth, find yourself” – Alysse Aallyn

    “Life is a puzzle, missing pieces guaranteed and you can’t cheat and look at the box” – Anonymous

    #Haiku: Every Book is a Zen Book

    Puzzle
    Words –
    Assume
    Solution –
    Labyrinths
    Demand
    Escape;
    Look
    Up

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    The Thief – Dispossessed:

    If This Card Chooses You – you’re boiling inside. You’re so mad you can’t think straight. You had something and now it’s gone – you have less. It was stolen from you by some thief. The fact that you stole it originally and you’re a thief too isn’t making you any happier. You were supposed to get this thing, you were in line for it, and now all bets are off.

    Broken Dreams – Do you dream of plunder? Strong rooms? Treasure palaces? Security systems?

    If Property Is Theft, then We’re all Thieves – Don’t covet, says the Bible. Don’t envy. We are born with a sense of loss we spend lifetimes trying to remedy. Something has been taken from us, but what? This “politics of grievance” has always waged a peculiar power, seemingly breeding the anger and revenge that come so naturally to the human genome. “If something has been taken from me I will take something from you.” Yet our loss remains amorphous. We cling to the concept that we were “entitled” to something we no longer have. Philosophers and psychologists speculate; is it the mother’s womb? The family nest? What exactly is this lost paradise?

    Only Warriors Are Truly Free – Warriors own nothing. We are not interested in acquiring burdens but in freeing the human psyche of its burdens. To do that, we must first free ourselves.

    Don’t Chain Yourself to a Nightmare– There is much talk nowadays that “the American Dream” is no longer possible. Very relevant to our study of Warrior Oracle! Dreams are our specialty! But what was that “dream”, exactly? a mystical concept of “wholeness” – family, life, work, rewards – always shifting according to who you are and from where you are looking. Once you are part of a “team” – even if just a team of two – the look can change dramatically. Is that a loss or a gain? What is value, what is hoarding? We know if we eat more than our cells can burn we get fat, and that if we eat too much too fast we will choke. How can we slip magically through this problematic life, light as feathers, bright as sunlight, strong as fire?

    By Becoming Warriors, that’s how. We no longer fill our tombs with the junk of real life for use in the Great Beyond, “terra cotta servants” who will “wake” to wait on us hand and foot. We are forced to satisfy ourselves with strictly “mental” pictures. Is the detachment of elder-hood a triumph of success or a long wail of departure?

    You Can’t Take It With You And You Don’t Want To – Not if you expect to fly! The “de-cluttering” movement did us all an enormous favor. Marie Kondo asked us to rid ourselves of every object that does not “spark joy”. That’s a high standard! We soon discover that daily life stirs up a lot of “necessary” detritus that sparks joy in literally no one but is a misery to live without. Probably the best way to free ourselves is to challenge the entitlement mystique with sharing.

    Warrior Danger – The whole principle of capitalism is to benefit from the work of others. It doesn’t take much imagination to see the grievances THAT can stir up. And yet “state” ownership churns up grievances of its own. Ownership itself is fraught with exclusion, hostility, and danger. The nature of the Warrior is to “Be” rather than to “own”. Can we still enjoy the world if it doesn’t belong to us and we don’t belong to it? Warriors say Yes!

    Warrior Challenge – Do we possess objects when we are not physically present? Can we ever possess people? Do we WANT to take responsibility for another’s entire existence? How do our dreams of freedom comport with our dreams of possession? Who – or what – is held captive? Warriors deliberately free ourselves – mentally and spiritually – but this is a commitment that must be refreshed daily due to the temporal demands of our physical existence. That means warriors forgive ourselves daily.

    Being a warrior means acknowledging that being wounded is a condition of life. Warriors come to terms with their wounds, evaluating them (often giving thanks for them), creating conceptual at projects about them and strategizing around them.

    Many of our wounds come from happenstance, birth order, parental crises, national dilemmas, international catastrophes. We’re all pushed out of the nest before we’re ready.

    Asked to comment on having sisters, Diana Mitford Guinness Mosley, of the six famous Mitford sisters, said “Sisters stand between one and life’s cruel circumstances” to which her sister Nancy replied, “Sisters are life’s cruel circumstances.” Both are true. But when I consider a life without sisters, that would definitely be worse. The only benefit no sisters would confer that I can imagine would be more attention from parents, and knowing them, could be I dodged a bullet.

    Sisters are models, Warriors who go Before. All three are warriors (our father was a noted warrior imprisoned for his crime of Free Thought). My eldest sister got a Masters degree in Fiber Sculpture – I’ve got to say I think this is even more bodacious than a PhD in Haiku. She still weaves in the morning – designs she sells among the jewelry and art of Archipelago in Rockport, ME. In the afternoons she kayaks the inlets of coastal Maine, mastering tides, wandering sea-animals and adventuring humans.

    My second sister is a world-adventuring cyclist, speaks Amslan, hikes, cherishing the widest group of friends.

    My youngest sister tends a labyrinth & two ponds on a glorious estate with three or four residences, a creek – all visited by otters, minks, bears, foxes, bobcat, coyote and all the feathered, furred and scaly Maine creatures.

    Models & Mentors – “The more stuff I donated the more I was able to breathe, the more trash I threw away, the more weight I felt was lifted, the more I was able to see a new life, the more joy I found” – Zina Harrington


    “Clutter is postponed decisions” – Barbara Hemphill

    “Life is your masterpiece. Edit frequently and ruthlessly” – Nathan W. Morris

    “To the spoils belong the victor” – F. Scott Fitzgerald

    “Freedom is the oxygen of the soul” – Moshe Dayan

    #Haiku: The Thief

    If
    Property’s theft:
    My greed’s your
    Crime
    I consume –
    Disperse –
    Your evidence.

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Chrysanthemum – Healing Rituals:

    If This Card Chooses You – you have reached the point of access to the gifts of the Warrior. Let the healing begin. Are you a believer in magic? Do you dream of restoration, of nostalgia, of lost youth?

    Warriors Believe In Magic – Bravely, we put ourselves in the way of harm, and harm is done to us. But we believe in the magic of restoration through transformation. These scars, these wounds, these experiences make us smarter, harder, brighter and more beautiful.

    Understand the Meaning of Your Scars – These are life’s tattoos, which have ennobled you. It is your honor to embody the story of the universe with your blood and your bone. But It is the Warrior’s Brain that brings us closest to God. The mystery of suffering is that it educates us into the greatest mystery of all –that God is willing to suffer with us because Love means holding each other through pain and infusing our strength into another’s sadness.

    Bow To Each Other – We are each other’s masters, we are each other’s pupils, we are each other’s lovers, siblings and rescuers. Drinking ginger tea from translucent porcelain cups, we lift our cups to each other. We bathe together in steaming pools. I release you as you release me. When darkness falls, we touch one another’s hands before departing. If we can bear it, we touch bodies.

    Warriors Recognize That We Cannot Diagnose Ourselves – We offer ourselves for the universe’s good and so it takes a world to cure us. Healing and diagnosis alike will come from the welcome lips of another. It has been scientifically proven that even plants respond to kind words. We yearn for the laying on of hands, for the gentle rituals that pass us from one stage of life to another.

    Warrior Challenge – Paradoxically, no “medicine” can succeed unless we “accept” our healing spiritually. We must feel “worthy” of restoration. What are we fighting for? Think deeply. We are not self-punishing but stating as clearly as we can that life is valuable in all its forms. If you are only as “young” as you feel, are we only as “healthy” as we allow ourselves to be? Forgive yourself. Accept change. Contrary to our fears, it is change that keeps us young.

    Warrior Danger – Healing cannot occur in an atmosphere of self-hatred and self-blame, but many of us are STILL “blaming” ourselves for twists of fate, for unlucky genetic, social and medical outcomes. “Fundamental attribution error” consists of blaming individuals for group effects. We are all caught up in the machinery of temporality. Never forget that we are souls who happen to have bodies, not bodies who happen to have souls.

    Warrior Opportunity – “Restoration” is such a glorious promise that early Christians found themselves ensnared in decades of argument about PHYSICAL resurrection. How would it work in cases of burning and dismemberment, exactly? It is easy to laugh at these painfully ridiculous theological conflicts. One is reminded of St. Joan of Arc’s response to interrogators at her trial who asked if angels appeared to her naked – “Do you think God cannot afford to clothe his angels?” Accept the power accorded to you by the universe. Accept the strength of your own mind, the control given by your chosen attitude. Healing is not just possible, it is a life-force in which we can all participate. Jesus came to us as a healer.

    Models & Mentors – “Healing yourself is connected with healing others” – Yoko Ono

    “What happens when people open their hearts? They get better.” – Haruki Murakami

    Your body cannot heal without play. Your mind cannot heal without laughter. Your soul cannot heal without joy.” ~ Catherine Rippinger Fenwick

    “We are healed of suffering only if we experience it to the full – Marcel Proust

    “Maybe the dragons in our lives are princesses” – Rainer Maria Rilke

    #Haiku: I Don’t Know

    Admit ignorance
    No shame –
    It’s healthy –
    Empty glass
    Asks for water

  • Becoming a Warrior – the Warrior Oracle by Alysse Aallyn

    Columbine – Addiction:

    If This Card Chooses You – Uh oh. You’ve become too attached. To … what? Investigate. Take it slow. Is your attachment harming your principles? Values? Relationships?

    The Warrior’s Fiercest Battle – Do you dream of imprisonment? Blank walls? Chains? Our neurocircuitry mandates habit-making behavior, but our intelligence recognizes entrapment, and our dreams send out distress signals. If you’re human, there is no way to avoid addiction. Welcome to the Club!

    We Are Wired For Addiction – If there’s no escaping it – that means you will have to fight this battle. But the good news is, this is exactly how you become Free. Anyone who hasn’t done it is still a slave to their hormones, instincts, patterning – just as animals are. Here’s the very thing you become a Warrior for – your best chance to develop a free will and a free soul.

    Study Your Opponent – Turns out we have tremendous choice over what we become addicted to. Some addictions are less corrupting than others. Visit an AA meeting and the consumption of sugar and tobacco is outright alarming. Are you addicted to gambling? Do you work in sales? Were you raised in a ritualistic faith? We easily become dependent on praise, on safety, on gratification, and our brains (and our general health) show our dependency. They threaten and panic when the “treat” is withdrawn.

    Warrior Challenge – This parasite doesn’t care if it kills its host. If you fear you are approaching a cliff-edge, you probably are. One test is to go on a “retreat” where your customary gratifications are not available, and attempt to form new gratifications. See what happens! Does your personality threaten to disintegrate? Great time to ask yourself: who am I really? This is such a good idea, we should build it into our lives, periodically. Just to keep us recognizing that cliff-edge where Soul and Self are lost.

    Warrior Danger – We always live with the possibility that we will lose our autonomy. We want to change, we know we SHOULD change, but we CAN’T. There’s no shame in needing outside help. This is the purpose of interventions, to demonstrate to our eyes and ears that we are harming ourselves and our relationships. Denial is a powerful defense mechanism, especially when we think we’ve finally found a substance/process that “magically” allows us to live on our particular cliff-edge – a dangerous job, risky sexual behaviors, risky recreational behaviors. We then have the choice of refusing to listen – giving up our relationships to keep up our self-abuse. Some hardened wretches tell anyone who listen that life itself isn’t worth it without their life-threatening self-abuse. They choose to die as slaves.

    Warrior Opportunity – You not only CAN free yourself, you MUST to deserve and preserve your Warrior Status. It is your spiritual obligation to live this territorial existence as an enlightenment opportunity. Familiar with the saying, “Live simply so that others may simply live” ? That mandates sharing. That means ALWAYS studying your consumption, NEVER allowing yourself to turn into a greedy pig and scheduling time to be alone with the universe and with God. To check on the hardiness of your Soul.

    Models & Mentors – “You can’t defeat the darkness by keeping it caged inside you”

    – Seth Adam Smith

    “All addictions are ways to not feel our feelings” – Ellen Burstyn

    “Sometimes you can only find heaven by backing slowly away from hell” – Carrie Fisher

    “Success is the sum of small efforts, repeated day in and day out”. – Robert Collier

    “The most common way people give up their power is thinking they don’t have any” – Alice Walker

    #Haiku: The Columbine – Addiction

    Brain cells beggared;
    Lovelorn
    Oxytocin receptors misfire:
    “Feed me!”