Alysse Aallyn

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  • 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.

  • 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”

  • Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

    The Lovers

    My husband and I frequently refer to each other as our “cuttle bone/cuddlebone.” We keep each other’s warrior blades sharp. When trying to explain how I became a warrior, deepest emotional relationships we form by choice paint a picture of a quest for support and validation. My coed boarding school had rigid social requirements of dating and communicating – there was a “Boys End” and a “Girls End” and every evening representatives from each side would meet in “Central” and exchange baskets of messages. At Girls’ End these messages (called “KOBS” or “Kindness of Bearer”) were stored in a stocking hung beside the recipient’s mirror. This was our earliest form of flirting! One lover I chose because his KOBS were beautiful – always expressed as free-floating poetry – another because he was imaginative and ambitious – a third because he was forceful and honest. It was how these boys came alive on the page that was significant to me.
    My last boyfriend at that school – whom I was to marry eleven years later – we are still married to this day – presented himself as an ideal combination of all of these, plus he was gorgeously beautiful. But before we could come together, many dragons needed to be killed.

    Leaving the Coven

    A craven of cronies stood
    Between us & God –
    God demands clones
    God hated short skirts.

    A damnation of judges
    Stood between us &
    Knowledge; truth exists
    Only in service.

    A clowder of cretins
    Stood between us &
    Art: “Don’t be disturbing”
    “Never trust instincts.”

    From the depths of
    This oubliette
    You drank the koolaid
    Guaranteeing survival

    Cherishing passions that
    One day would rescue me –
    So I could grow up
    And write you this poem.

  • 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.

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

    Creativity –

    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.

    Clap Back

    When the universe calls


    You have to answer


    Mimicking what you hear


    Imitating what you see


    Until you’re brave enough to grab


    The balls of fire


    And juggle them for yourself.


    Then you get offered a job


    Juggling other people’s fire.


    Good work for some but not for warriors


    We call those people


    Mercenaries.


    We need to juggle our own fire


    And if you think learning the basics


    Was humiliation enough


    You won’t survive this.


    There’s a lot of stumbling and


    Silencing.


    I was what’s politely called a


    “Late Bloomer.”


    But I did finally


    Bloom.


    And when you’ve created your first


    And maybe only


    Immortelle


    It’s worth everything.

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

    Conflict

    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.

    Detaching From Dad

    Dad taught us to stand up for ourselves


    Except around him.


    Dad enjoyed being silly


    When we were little.


    Entertaining story teller –


    Teased us to obedience.


    When I said wild horses couldn’t drag me


    He played wild horse.


    He was the captain, and


    Life wasn’t ship-shape


    When I was a shape-shifter.


    He wanted to go to Europe


    Without my eldest sister


    She called her congressman


    To change Daddy’s mind.


    He institutionalized her in


    Switzerland


    Two thousand miles from


    Our new home.


    I was stubborn and


    Honest: the worst combination.


    When I was twelve and Genevieve fourteen


    He sent us to school across


    Oceans.


    As my dad had before me


    I stood up to uncles and teachers


    Because I had to respect somebody


    Might as well be myself.

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

    Summer

    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.”

    Trailing

    When we sailed I was fore & aft &

    Up the mast –

    Exulting with the spinnaker –

    Bikinied & brown with

    Binoculars in hand –

    Mapping unseen islands

    In the geography of my heart

    Scoring constellations

    To the cosmology of my brain –

    Reading by the light of

    Photo-luminescence –

    Foraging with seals & jellyfish

    Flying higher

    Dreaming farther

    Fish-hooking memory forever.

    Mother warmed the compass

    Father was a sextant,

    Sisters manned the jibs, but

    I owned the reacher-drifter –

    Favorite sail

    Which makes the most of

    Any air

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

    The Goddess –

    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.

    Artistic Expression

    What if you could


    Be Yourself at work –


    Release


    Every day feelings


    Invoking ancient


    Raptures?


    Though mother disapproved and


    Dad worried, I


    Launched my


    Physical self


    Into the Universe and


    The Universe


    Loved me back.

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

    2. Ego

    From the very beginning I didn’t like doing the same thing as other people. What was the point of that? If someone ordered the same food as me, I changed my order. I was surprised that people would want to do the same thing at the same time. As I grew older, enthusiasm was ruthlessly damped down and my possibilities seemed to harden. Who other people thought you were was “ego”. And they wanted you to stay in that place. Much as I wanted to be admired, maybe even cherished, I could see this categorizing was limiting. A very bad thing. But how to get out of it seemed a conundrum. How can you view the situation you’re in from a point of view you don’t actually have? Lucky for us, there’s imagination! If we are really lucky, imagination crystallizes into Art.

    I discovered we don’t have to settle for Ego, for making ourselves distinct from other people. Artists are shape-shifters – they all the best lines, all the brightest colors, giving themselves the best possibilities.

    When the “multiverse” became popular, I wasn’t surprised. I was used to living several lives at once.

    Being Wrong

    Warriors don’t “settle.”

    We never “stay put”.

    Warrior Essence is

    Exploring new territory.

    Territory that scares you

    Features you don’t recognize

    Sparks uncomfortable feelings.

    I learned to like this.

    Roving continents alone

    Doing everything

    Wrong.

  • Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

    Resistance –

    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

    Even during thunderstorms that

    Shook me to my core

    I resisted you by

    Refusing to come down.