Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Memoir

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

    Symbiosis – Interdependence –

      During pursuit of my never achieved degree in Rehab Counseling (at Springfield College) I worked three years at Easter Seal. There were good things about it but it was not a happy experience. I taught Career Exploration – that was the fun part, trying to open the eyes of frightened people diagnosed as “disabled” to the possibilities out there. I knew very little about computers – just coming into vogue – and Easter Seals refused to get me training – but I passed on what little I could figure out. We worked on resumes, interviews, goal setting, and seeing yourself through the employers’ eyes.

      While I worked there Easter Seals built a glamorous new building and moved all “managers” out. It was carefully explained to us that anyone actually providing services to clients was unimportant, replaceable, and would be paid as little as possible – being a manager, on the other hand, was a high-status, remunerative, important occupation.

      I saw I needed a new job, pronto and used my new skills to get hired at a non-profit start-up of ex-addicts hoping to influence legislation. As the sole “office help” I enjoyed creating business practices from the ground up. I kept track of members and planned member events. Unfortunately, my boss was a very angry man (he once threw a book at me) and was usually seething about what he saw as my completely misplaced confidence and independence. After three years, we had enough work to hire an office helper; but I was not assigned to be her supervisor. This was actually fine with me because I was busy managing a family and writing on the side. You hire a poet at your peril, and I don’t think I could conceal my distaste for office politics. Office Helper observed this dynamic and began immediately planning to take my job. This only worked briefly – once I was pushed out she lasted a month.

      I was determined to keep up the good relationships I’d forged, but it turned out to be impossible. Their world was just not my world. In the meantime I had one child in college and another finishing high school – I thought I might make it on a part-time job and on paper I certainly had the skills. The weird interplay with my ex-boss – officially fatherly yet boiling with suppressed sexual rage – gave me an idea for a novel.

      Seawracked

      He lost her
      Spoke too soon
      As men are wont
      Words freighted by an inner logic
      Fell to earth and lay
      Prey to busy bristle-footed worms
      Tidily dismantle
      Subject, verb & predicate;
      Sucked out sense and left
      The elegiac bones to rot
      Amid kelp-wigged rock & glass-rope sponge
      Cheek by jowl with
      Long dead fishermen’s wives
      Punished now for ill-set dough and
      Worse-set hair
      Mouths agape in imitation of
      The badly sutured wounds of childbirth
      Secrets told; corpses left to nourish
      Nature’s counting-house
      One season only; sharing space
      With shattered petrels
      Feathers spewed like pillow-stuffing
      In passing frenzy of love-struck boy s-
      Strewn among the shavings of these once great ships
      Built by hearts & backs of men
      Who loved their daughters far too well –
      Losing them to sailors
      Crueler than the great sea-god himself;
      He who stirs our sleep these nights
      With grief-crazed cries of loons
      Casting on the waters for their
      Far-flung children
      Lost forever now
      As we are lost as
      He lost her.

    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

        Legacy –

          Difficult to become a warrior without resources. It’s probably not impossible, but it seems to require more psychic strength –or perhaps just the ability to engage a team – than I’ve ever had. On the other hand, I’ve always been able to make the most of whatever resources came my way. It’s the gift I’d like most to pass on to my children, because it helps you persist in the slog and outwit your pursuers.

          I can’t tell you how many job interviews I’ve had where I realized they wanted me to come across as more ruthless, and I just couldn’t do it, even for the purposes of Shapeshifting Performance Art and Fun Impersonations, both of which I was familiar with using on a daily basis and enjoyed. But this was survival we were talking about, the magic metamorphosis of confusion into livelihood. My interest in personal transformation led me to studying a degree in Rehab Counseling and this particular interviewer seemed to want me to express a desire to punish my clients. Maybe that was when I realized I was in the wrong business. I wanted to teach these people how to become warriors.

          How To Become a Warrior

          In heaven the victors
          Celebrate with their rivals
          Not taking it personally
          But loving.
          Forgiving.
          “You thought WHAT?
          I was wrong!”
          You went WHERE?
          It’s so nuts!”
          How we’ll laugh while
          Scars dissolve;
          Iridescent plumage
          Shivers off our beautiful selves
          Unconditionally
          Eternally
          Mysteriously
          Revealed.

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

          Cooperation –

            Becoming a warrior is rough. The only thing harder than becoming a warrior is NOT becoming one. Then you’re subject to the wild vagaries of circumstance. What you must do Is fight your way up to the controls and try to steer this thing in a safe direction. You won’t be able to do that without assembling a team, and teams rely on cooperation.

            My mother died of breast cancer when she was 70 years old – and my father lost his mind. This was a complete surprise to everyone. My father had always been the strongest, smartest, wiliest person in the room. He was especially good at Reality. As the captain of our ship he piloted us through storms, foreign borders, bizarre customs officials and threatening cops and robbers. He once jumped overboard with a knife in his teeth to cut our propeller free. He untangled anchor chains, rescued a man at sea, founded successful businesses, managed money and liberated cash from international banks. He didn’t believe in God, he was scientifically educated and intellectually up-to-date.

            My mother’s death was no surprise – she’d been dying for five years, up until the time the hospital sent her home and said they could do nothing for her. After the body bag left, my father’s first impulse was to kill himself by swimming as far out to sea as he could go. He was rescued by my brother-in-law, but he was still talking crazy. A helicopter took him to a hospital on the mainland where he was diagnosed with grief psychosis and briefly institutionalized while various medications were tried.


            I took him out for lunch one day and he asked to stop at the Kwik Check for a newspaper, running in by himself. In the car I went into a slow panic – what if he bought razor blades? Luckily, he didn’t, but that was the way we all had to think as I strategized with my three sisters. We took turns with him. We could see the medication – Thorazine – had debilitating side effects, so checked him into the Philadelphia Mood Clinic to see if they could do a better job. They could, using primarily talk therapy.

            Here my father fixated on getting married again, and as soon as he was out of the clinic he was stalking a variety of women, all of whom turned him down. Finally, he hooked up with an old friend of the family who was coming out of a bad divorce where her husband wanted Someone Else. She needed a Someone Else to shake in his face.

            She certainly was familiar – having attended all the same churches and schools that we had. But she was not like my mother at all – flat-footed where my mother was imaginative, plain where my mother was beautiful, astringent where my mother was warm. But my father certainly calmed down. Creepily, he put her in charge of everything. He began referring to her as “your mother”. None of us were invited to the wedding. Newly married, they went on a tour of all our houses where he carefully explained to us that we wouldn’t be getting anything in the will, because he’d already done plenty, plus he’d made our stepmother leave her job so she could tour the world with him and he had to take care of her.

            My husband said, Great! I’ll take it from here! One of my sisters said, “It’s his money, he can do what he wants with it.” Another was so depressed – “He’s abandoning us AGAIN” – she couldn’t speak. The third sister said, “We’re helpless, we can’t stop him.”

            I said, I was taught to speak truth to power. I was taught that resistance is not only not futile but mandatory. Guess who taught me that? My conscientious objector father, who went to Kentucky State Prison for his pacifist beliefs.

            I wrote him a letter in which I said half of that money was Mom’s and she felt an obligation to and love for her grandchildren and daughters. I threw in every moral rationale I could think of. Incredibly – considering the way he’d distanced himself from us – it worked. He said he would leave us a small amount at his death and put the bulk of the money in a trust that would revert to us on our stepmother’s death. He didn’t leave us as much as he promised, but the trust idea is a good one. Someday it might even come to pass.

            ON BEING DISINHERITED

            These are the tasks
            To be performed
            Without feeling;
            The snipping the
            Slashing
            The shredding
            The with-holding, the
            Bundling into bunches.
            You play the remote ogre
            And I’ll be the crying child.

            Why do partitioned pieces
            Melt before they touch?
            You fear to give;
            I am helpless to receive.
            Suppose we changed places.
            Would that explain
            Your fear of me?

          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

              Partnership –

                Right after our marriage, my husband went into partnership with his mother to buy two wrecked downtown buildings and turn them into condos. I was happy about this since I was already thirty years old and wanted to concentrate on starting a family. We moved into the recently vacated grandmother’s home – she relocated to a nursing home – it was a 45 minute drive from my mother In law’s house.

                I noticed right away that my mother-in-law was a contentious person. She flat-out contradicted people, turning social chitchat into argument. She talked so angrily and incessantly about her divorce you would have thought it happened yesterday, not ten years ago. Above all, she hated seeing other people happy and expressed constant envy, resentment and rage. She made regular false statements about herself as if challenging others to correct her, and she corrected me about my own areas of expertise where I could easily prove her wrong if I cared to. I didn’t care to – she was my mother-in-law, my landlord and my husband’s business partner. I just determined to see as little of her as possible. She liked argument, publicly humiliating the shy, frightened man she called her “boyfriend” and ruining countless holidays working hard to destroy his ego. (He had no visible ego.)

                This was unsettling, to say the least. My husband sank all his money into their venture, she kept the books and was supposed to pay him a salary – she never did. They worked hard to secure a construction loan and she used part of the money to buy her “dream home” which meant they didn’t have enough cash to finish the project. We began to get threats of lawsuits from the bank which stated that I, who was not a partner and had signed nothing, was also on the hook for the money. She had no regard for the truth and frequently claimed lying on sworn documents was a clever business tactic.

                My husband was better than this, tried to correct and help her and in turn was attacked by her. But he felt helpless – all his money was tied up and the condos were slowly being readied for sale. When I complained about her behavior he was worried I would “expose” her and make things worse. So our partnership, too, was threatened. They went into therapy together – she reading from a long list of criticisms of my husband and what a terrible person and partner he was. When I finally spoke to the therapist I discovered neither of them had mentioned the mother-son relationship (which they both considered humiliating.) ! Needless to say, the newly-informed therapist “got it” immediately. “Get the hell out”, he advised. (She never paid him and he joined the long line of suers against her.)

                We bought a modest house in a struggling neighborhood and began to upgrade it. We had two small children and I was finishing college for a bachelor’s in psychology. All the way along I asked for professional help trying to understand this weird woman who hated her own children, humiliated anyone who ever loved her and felt insulted by rescuers. It was my first experience of evil. The diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder was just being established and she fit it to a tee. The bank took our house. Ultimately I was able to convince my husband, who was contemplating suicide, that we needed to get away from her and sever all ties. He got a wonderful legal writing job that combined his best interests, we moved two states away and lived happily ever after except… there was always my husband’s pain. Having that kind of person for a mother.

                #Haiku: The Definition of Evil

                Lost souls
                Twist truth:
                “Trust” is “punish”
                “Wild” is “Poison”
                “Conserve” is “destroy”.

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

                Resources:

                  To our father, we were the Four Princesses – Alyssiana, Genviana, Merrillana and Avrilana. He grew up with a mother, a sister, two brothers, a grandmother and four great-aunts in circumstances of extreme frugality in the Depression. Nonetheless, they were a family of snobs and social pretensions kept afloat by a “bachelor uncle” who made a fortune in the insurance business.

                  My father came into the capital from his trust fund when he was 25 (I was born when he was 31) built us a house and rented out surrounding properties. He went into the construction business with an architect friend from college, then into the laboratory development business with one of his tenants. He replaced his blue-chip stocks with high-flying ventures like Xerox and Sony, which in the sixties was like coining money.

                  By the time I was 11 he quit his job and went into philanthropic work in Africa. I was concerned that we would be “poor”. I had already seen the stark divisions in my Ohio hometown and I never aspired to shift to the other side of the tracks. He told me not to worry, but when I saw the desperate refugees from a war-torn country he was trying to help, I had to worry.

                  My father had a yacht built, my beautiful mother bought high-end clothes, they invested in art and traveled all over the world, but one by one his daughters fell off the gravy train. We went to boarding schools and approved colleges, shopped at re-sale stores and were discouraged from thinking of ourselves as “rich.”

                  My father bought a house in a 50 acre park (in the middle of the city!) and slowly filled it treasures acquired abroad. I felt guilty for all the money he gave me and aspired to pay my own way. I was relieved to dodge college – that was a big price tag.

                  I achieved an artist husband like myself – a touring musician with a wonderful sound who could play anything. We bought a house in the woods and I settled down to write. I figured we were set. But I had confused “intrinsic” with “extrinsic” values which can be easily swept away. I didn’t have “resources”. When my “house of cards” collapsed I found myself sitting in a temp office, paid minimum wage, waiting in case someone wanted to hire me for my only known skill: typing.

                  HORROR STORY

                  Lubricity
                  Darkens into sweat;
                  We face each other
                  Across the cooling dinner,
                  Night by night
                  Stiff as andirons
                  Masterpieces seen best by candlelight
                  To hide the cracks,
                  Well-meant improvements by
                  Another’s hand.
                  A well-matched pair.
                  A fountain sings but
                  One tune only. It didn’t look this way
                  Proceeding forward.
                  Backward is a different view.
                  I could have sworn that we’d last longer.
                  I caught flak from my mother,
                  Who cast a role in Wuthering Heights;
                  Preaching doom
                  In guise of cheer.
                  All I wanted was
                  Sufficient light
                  To read my tarot; recycled
                  Tea leaves brewed
                  From your used bathwater.
                  The leaves are dank and do not speak.
                  I shiver with cold and you
                  With anger; a
                  Brace of disappointments.
                  Speechless.
                  There’s still too much
                  We can’t admit.

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

                  Wisdom –

                    What is the difference between an old soul and a new soul? So many times, I saw the people around me choose suffering. I made a lot of idiotic choices in my life, but I never chose suffering. I graduated from suffering to sadness, and now I’m trying to graduate to compassion.

                    Wisdom means seeing suffering coming and trying to get out of its way. It’s not always possible, and sometimes we just have to blast through it.

                    A lot of my poems and stories are about ghosts. Ghosts describe the edge between the comprehensible and the impossible, between sadness and suffering, between guilt and gratitude.

                    The deaths of pets are always traumatic for children, and I could even participate in the sadness of roadkill. I once tried to carry our cat Beautiful out to the road to see a dead cat, but, being an old soul, she did not want to come.

                    When our family moved to Africa, I was eleven and had to leave our dog Four-Eyes, behind. I was haunted by his eyes for years and years. Every time I read the book The Cat That Went to Heaven I was in floods of tears.

                    I asked a wise old man if animals went to heaven and he said, “Think how disappointed St. Francis would be if they don’t.” With a gush of relief I realized he was right – that wouldn’t be heaven for St. Francis. Or me.

                    STICKS

                    My dog
                    Went on fetching sticks
                    Long after it was dead.
                    We’d find them on the stoop
                    Arranged in patterns.
                    Monk would sigh and say
                    Poor old Four-Eyes
                    Missing us. Still
                    Playing people games

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

                    The Sun – Truth –

                      High school for me was a religious boarding school whose faculty asserted their monopoly on truth. I considered myself an honorable person and despised lies. So when asked straightforward questions, I told the truth and accepted my punishment. However, I gradually discovered that they reserved the right to lie to us and in fact, considered that “parental” and pedagogical. Was there any point telling “the truth” to such people? Apparently, truth was a scarce resource that I, at age 14, possessed. The hypocrisy was huge. My father loved the Society of Friends because creed was optional, attendance at meeting was voluntary and silent. No one spoke unless moved by the Holy Spirit. But at our school, religious attendance (we even had Vespers!) was mandatory and our captive audience was lectured from the Facing Bench (where the Important People sit.)

                      In such a world, is truth possible? Is it even findable? Above all, is it communicable? I was naturally artistic, a bent which was discouraged because it was “self-indulgent”. And poetry (it’s poetry if the poet says it is) is the most self-indulgent of all. So that’s what I chose.

                      PREPPY

                      Corseted with verbs
                      The French teacher sweeps
                      The cherry blossoms from the tennis court
                      As she would like to sweep
                      The cherries, squelching them soundly
                      Beneath soccer-spiked shoes

                      While the headmistress
                      Cello-breasted
                      Polishes graffiti carved upon her coffin
                      In Chaucerian High English
                      And the girls –
                      Nun-white, nun-blue

                      Soar above hockey fields like
                      Foul-mouthed angels, anticipated ecstasy locked
                      In narrow hope chests ripened on
                      Amphetamines
                      Free Love
                      Bad dreams.

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

                      The MOON – Influence –

                        In the life of a warrior, Models and Mentors are key. Whose coping mechanisms and vision of reality do you use to sustain you through tough times. When I was young, TV viewing was an event – not an influence. Reading was the most powerful influence, ever since I tackled My Father’s Dragon with its beautiful Henri Rousseau-like illustrations. What could they mean? I was determined to learn to read.

                        I entered books through illustrations, which I puzzled over long and hard. Egyptian tomb paintings. Imaginative depictions of the city of Troy. Nineteenth century pirates battled with Narnians for control of my dreams. I worked my way through world fairy tales and a bowdlerized Thousand and One Nights.

                        On summer vacation we read a book aloud; the Travels of Jamie McPheeters is the one I specially remember – I was horrified by its depiction of Indians eating puppies.

                        Summers we were allowed to buy books to take with us on the boat, and we read each other’s books. That’s how I discovered my sister’s favorite, Nancy Drew, and I was immediately galvanized. Here was literature as aspiration – more intimate than a hero’s tale or an imaginary quest; specifically designed to appeal to the yearnings of an artistically underserved group, it depicted and ennobled a female snoop and an empowered teenager – someone you identify with and actually imagine becoming. Nancy Drew was certainly someone I very much wanted to emulate and in my own small way, I believe I have.

                        I once shocked at group of literati debating what protagonist of literature one would choose to be by saying in was Nancy Drew, hands down. No contest. She’s constantly solving puzzles, having adventures and joyriding with her friends. Although she’s been physically threatened, her bodily autonomy and integrity is never in doubt. Over the years, I haven’t managed as much joyriding as I’d like but I’ve solved a LOT of puzzles, adventured much, and been very lucky.

                        Boss Detective

                        Nobody listens
                        To the teenage girl
                        Or notices her either
                        Pawing through receipts
                        Inspecting medicine cabinets
                        Snooping in the garage –
                        Is that weedkiller
                        Paint thinner or
                        Vanishing cream –
                        Keys to the attic, cellar or
                        Deepest basement of
                        The self?