I’m convinced the main attraction of the evangelical religious movement is that it offers the opportunity to be “born again.” But I believe that option is always available to you without the necessity of signing up to be a cog in a “movement.”
When I was twelve years old I read a James Bond novel in which he is washed up on a beach and needs to be nursed back into life without any of the previous appurtenances of his personality. I was very taken with this idea. Of course, it has literary antecedents in all the “castaway” and adventure stories of John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson. The question revolves around your essential self: do you have one? Or can even that be remodeled and rebuilt? This is the question warriors try to answer.
Warriors pare their needs down. We keep ourselves ready for action. We are shapeshifters and time travelers – if that sounds attractive to you, keep listening.
The first rebirth was rather brutal. At age 12, I was sent to live with my father’s sister and uncle and four boy cousins in Wayland, Massachusetts. Since these people didn’t believe anything my father believed I found this cross-training startling, and the more I behaved in my father’s image, the more I was punished. My uncle was enormously excited to have a pubescent girl in the household, snuck into my bathroom, groped and French-kissed me. I did my best to fend him off, while crushing on one of my cousins. In intervals, we exhibited social politeness. (I attended dancing class where white gloves were mandated for touching specimens of the opposite sex.) I also was taught to ski. Sort of. This hot-house atmosphere lasted only nine months.
My parents simply refused to listen to, believe in, or pay attention to any of this. I realized I needed to become a different person –the person I truly was, underneath, the person without all this reflexive training and behavior. And the question was, who was that?
People often translate “serendipity” as “luck” – highly desirable and a very rare commodity. I think it translates better as “surprise” – equally desirable and much more common. It’s easy to imagine yourself into a modality where everything’s a surprise – as it is for a three year old or a friendly and excitable dog.
Warriors enjoy surprise. We ride its drafts, like a hawk aboard breezes. Seen this way, all life becomes a joy.
Art is built on a framework of serendipity and so are warriors. The idea is to take advantage of what’s around, use your imagination to aggregate seemingly unconnected objects/ideas and shepherd them into usable, satisfying and constructive formats. Usable for what? To get where you’re trying to go. Natch. Share the surprise.
The “warrior” ethos first emerges when we bump up against the “forces” trying to block us. What are these forces? Sometimes individual people, but more usually combinations of people, working together to pound you into a shape for their purposes, not for yours. They’re not interested in imagination and surprise, but in coercion and control. It doesn’t take much observation to uncover their conviction that all resources and power belong to them, and you should cooperate with that. Why? The pay-off is mutable and unclear, but the punishments are stark and immediate.
Warriors become wily. Serendipity itself – its recognition, use & joy – all in our corner. Their side is having a miserable time and they have to crank up the addictions to get through it. We, on the other hand, are finding invisible breezes. And riding them.
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.
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”
When I was 11 I saw a 3,000 year old Greek play in a Greek stone theatre and was very taken by all its mechanisms of chorus and emotion. When we went back to the boat I sat down and wrote my own play, Chrysothemis, about Electra’s other sister. I couldn’t help it, I had to reflect that emotion back. It was a hot day and everyone else went swimming, but a Warrior would have finished that play. I finished the play.
It’s in Conflict that warriors emerge. My uncle insisted people in authority be “respected” and said whether they were worthy of respect was not the point. My parents were never that crass. It was a subtle game with them. My mother referred conflict to my father; we were ”hurting” her by not being the people that she wanted. It was hard to take seriously. But “discipline” quickly transferred to my father and he was a much scarier proposition. He was physically violent – spanking me, breaking down my door, visibly losing his temper and then further enraged over losing his temper. This was a whirlwind I could not ride and it hardened me against him. Some facts he refused to accept, actual truths he rejected with “No.” I understood that my mother was too weak to face things but Dad claimed to be a fearless seeker in life. It made me disrespect him.
My family typically spent a month each summer cruising on a thirty-seven foot sloop called the Phoenix. Four children and two adults relating in such a confined space shaped the warrior skills of my adult personality, including a taste for exploration, for reveling in the physical pleasures of water, wind, storm & sun, for the absolute dissociation of reading and thinking, and for reading aloud, also group card games such a Michigan and Oh Hell played during wild evening parties called “Phoenix A-Gogo.”
One of my earliest jobs was an office work temp – ending up as receptionist at an architecture firm. In my hegira through multiple workplaces I did not find one where I liked the lowly way I was treated. But Warriors, by definition, don’t put up with the Status Quo. Seeking to ratchet up my power level I used my training and auditioned to be a dancer. Things improved mightily! Although I still encountered some mistrust and scorn, on the whole, I achieved my goal of feeling plugged into the Universal Power Source.
It’s a different challenge coming in to oneself in a large family. I’ve never been certain since which part of me is my real self and which part is my sisters. Certainly the push-pull with my 18 month older sister Genevieve had a significant effect on me. You could argue that she forced me to become a warrior, in order to resist her.
Genevieve was a natural leader – she rewarded complicity and punished rebellion. The escapades I adventured on with her – stringing the entire house with yarn like a maze, filling the kitchen with sand – were enormous fun, even though they got us into trouble. But I often wanted to be alone and discovered that if I climbed into the highest branches of the cooper beech I could read peacefully. No one could get at me there.
Reader of Trees
I was the only one who knew your bark
Was better than your bite
I could resist you there
Climbing higher just to
Become myself
Dragging books into branches
Like a jaguar storing prey – fairy tales – The Iliad – Egyptian magic – That was how it started
Dawn was just breaking as Scarlet came home. She took a long, hot bath and dressed, but the warmest sweaters and tights could not block the chill that had settled in her bones. The kitchen had become a crime scene. Enid switched her sphere of operations to the tiny kitchen off the ballroom. She could toast bread. Milk could be placed against the cold windowsill to keep it fresh.
Scarlet crawled into bed with Nick. He still was healthy, wide-eyed, fresh, new and needy. He had no idea how horrible the world really was.
“She’s gone,” Scarlet told Enid. “The brain injury was just too awful.”
“What made you wake?”
“I’m not sure. I had a dreadful dream. Something about Miss Bottomley lost on a raft. I must have heard a sound from downstairs.”
“Miss Bottomley screamed. I heard it too. That dreadful woman must have attacked her to stop her noise.”
Candi had lots of reasons for attacking people. All given to her – thought Scarlet grimly, by my dear husband.
The policeman climbed up the stairs to see the women. He didn’t look like a detective but more like a department store floorwalker with his shiny bald head and a sharp-cut suit.
“Scotland Yard,” he introduced himself. “Inspector MacBlythe. May I get the details of your story?”
“We’ll meet you in the sitting room,” sighed Scarlet. She climbed reluctantly out of bed and walked to the chintz settee she had so admired just a few brief weeks ago. She had thought she knew trouble and sorrow then, but in reality she had been only too naïve in the ways of misery. Fatally so. How could she could have ever guessed what depths of viciousness simple selfishness and greed could release!
The Inspector was not as surprised by the existence of a night guard as the bobby had been. “This place is a treasure house,” he said. “It’s at least a two-man job.”
“I wish we’d thought of it,” Scarlet wept. “The security man seemed so confident.”
Enid freshened the tea.
“What connection are you to Mrs. Pourfoyle?” MacBlythe was coming to the meat of the matter. “When I found out she and my husband were having an affair I told him I wanted a divorce. She quit her job and moved into our country house – at least that’s what my solicitor tells me. But last week she came up to London and threatened me as if I was the one blocking the divorce. But Ian’s been the blocker. It seems he’s got other girlfriends, one actually living with him in his flat. Again, according to my solicitor.”
MacBlythe took down all Pelham D’Arcy’s and Ian’s information, and moved over to Enid. Nick began to cry and Scarlet gladly sprang to her feet to remove him from the room.
Pelham called when the police had finished with him and requested an interview – “you and Enid both.”
“Oh, good,” said Enid. “I don’t want to be alone. Let’s have dinner out, afterwards.”
“I’m too tired for anything but fish and chips,” said Scarlet, who really didn’t want to see people.
“That’s fine with me.” Dear Enid, obliging as always.
Bob Thomas and Pelham met them in the Partners’ Room, which had a long table, imposing portraits and deep comfortable wingback chairs. Nick slept angelically in his carrycot. Scarlet imagined someday trying to explain all this to him.
“Well, this is a terrible thing,” said Bob Thomas, pouring tea all around. From an antique silver set, Scarlet noticed. She and Enid refused sherry. “Is the woman mad?”
“Temporarily maddened,” contributed Pelham, who was more accustomed to the vagaries of divorce.
“Well, she’s committed murder, is what she’s done,” said Bob Thomas.
They all agreed it was an unconscionable thing as they sipped their tea. There was a knock on the door and Pom thrust his head inside.
“Pom, I’m in a meeting!” gasped Scarlet.
“I asked Mr. Bronfen to join us,” said Bob Thomas. “Tea? Sherry?”
Pom accepted a small sherry. He sat next to Scarlet and held her hand tightly, under the table. “All three of you – Mr. Bronfen, Mrs. Rumson and Mrs. Wye – are beneficiaries under Miss Bottomley’s will.”
Light burst onto Scarlet when she realized, he is talking about me! She had forgotten she was Mrs. Wye. Suddenly she was on a par with Lady Lechmere in her attorney’s eyes. She had been upgraded.
“Oh, my goodness,” she gasped. “But won’t they contest it?”
“Who?” inquired Bob Thomas calmly. “There are no interested parties. She was literally the last of her line. The property would have reverted to the Crown.”
“Mr. Inkum-“
“Mr. Inkum would not dare. The papers he attempted to get Miss Bottomley to sign were so outrageously self-interested he would be drummed out of the profession if anyone complained.”
Reality began to sink in. She sadly recalled Miss Bottomley’s delighted exclamation, “Do you know, I am a very rich woman?”
Pom and Enid and Scarlet gazed at each other, dazzled.
Bob Thomas cleared his throat. “There are six trusts concerning real estate, art, publishing and commercial properties. Mrs. Wye is the discretionary trustee and I am the advisor.”
And he proceeded to explain.
Scarlet was openly clutching Pom’s hand as they staggered out of the lawyers’ office. “I’m gobsmacked,” said Enid. “What a lovely human being she was.”
“And how we’re going to miss her,” gasped Scarlet.
Pom guided them into a nearby bistro – “do you like pizza? You must try it,” and ordered a bottle of chianti.
“To Miss Bottomley’s foresight and generosity,” toasted Pom.
Nick’s eyes were big as he looked from each to each in the candle flame.
“But we couldn’t protect her!’ sighed Scarlet. “It’s because of me she’s dead, don’t you see?”
“How could you ever have guessed that Candi would do such a thing?”
“I couldn’t!”
“Any thug could have broken in and attacked poor Miss Bottomley at any time. She could have been assaulted on the street! She was all alone before we came.”
“But the time was so short. Too short.”
“Time is always too short,” said Pom and he squeezed Scarlet’s hand meaningfully.
Alysse Aallyn 