Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Memoir

  • 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?

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

      Dreams & Imagination

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

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

      #Haiku: Re-Cognition

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

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

      Ambivalence –

      I like to work but I definitely understand the procrastination people. Is there anything more painful than our efforts never matching our imagination? YES, the horrible realization that all our ideas are BAD. But there’s something even more painful than that – having NO ideas. With such a fraught future awaiting isn’t it better to just exist – even if interminably – on the precipice of Hope? But that way lies FRUSTRATION and that’s the most horrible emotion of all. You’re all blocked up – can’t express yourself. And you know the person blocking you is YOU so there’s self-hatred and hopelessness, too.

      Let me introduce you to the pleasures of being a Warrior. Warriors aren’t looking for perfection – not only is that impossible – it’s a waste of all this excellent musculature we’ve been training forever and ever. Warriors are about Process ie. Battles. It’s one battle after another, guys. Do Warriors yearn to retire? NO. We want to WIN. We’re going to eliminate that Frustration by finding a way around it. We’re going to educate ourselves about our latest bedevilment and we are going to conquer it.

      I saw the great mime Marcel Marceau perform his famous piece about escaping a cage. Then he finds a cage outside that and one outside THAT and on and on. That’s life, folks. The way I’ve come to terms with it is by choosing Eternity. If you have Eternity on your side, you can accomplish anything. According to Blaise Pascal (1600’s) all you have to do is compare the benefits of life with Belief (meaning, comfort & hope) to the benefits of life without (you’re not responsible to anyone or for anyone!) Freedom from superstition would be a possible argument if non-believers were actually free from superstition but no one is. Superstition just transmutes itself into a different form, so it probably is endemic to the human brain. Warriors must be free of superstition – we mapmakers glory in Reality.

      #Haiku: Warrior Courage

      Terrifying
      Ascent
      Leads to
      Breathtaking view of
      Eternity

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

      Duality

      Have you ever both wanted something and not wanted it? Of course you have. It’s the human condition. We often choose something temporary, hoping to dodge the consequences. Or we tolerate something to get a certain outcome, and when we’re denied that, we feel cheated.

      My duality is the desire to reveal myself and also be private. I want both things at once – to be completely known and to be utterly unknown.

      I already have two superpowers (Art & Love) but if I could get a third (seems unlikely) I would choose Invisibility. I love eavesdropping on conversations.

      These aspects of myself have certainly frustrated incredulous friends, boyfriends, managers and agents.

      I was very uncomfortable in the theatre, speaking and acting other people’s words, but I think (though I never got the chance) that acting my own words would have felt even worse.

      I could never express to family and friends the enormous relief it was to dance – utterly silent – in the spotlight –to my own moods – which you couldn’t dignify as “choreography”. Being almost nude didn’t bother me at all but felt absolutely right, since clothes & costumes were an impediment to which the performer must be mindful.

      I became a Warrior trying to explain these anomalies to people. Welcome to duality – the other edge we walk.

      Centering

      Dance is holy expression

      A centering, before

      The explosion

      Tuning to ancient volcanos

      Pre-dating the planet

      Performing with magma

      Shooting like footlights

      Re-shaping everything

      Selfhood and sainthood

      Willingly abandoned.

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

      Dissonance –

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

      Bird of Paradise

      I have seen the


      Souls caved in-


      Flashing hyaline –


      Wings upflung


      Tesserae shagreen;


      A flare-tailed phoenix


      Shuddering-


      Rip the orchid-breasted


      Dream


      Blood & lung –


      Incinerating


      Coils of lies


      Where love & truth –


      Diamorphate –


      Polychromize

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

      The Shadow –

      Is there justice…or not? The Shadow says there isn’t. The Shadow passes over us, enervatingly, sapping our vitals, suggesting, “What’s the use?” If Jesus is right and “By their fruits you shall judge them” then the Shadow’s apparent desire is that we lose hope and focus and accomplish nothing.

      This is such a devastatingly undesirable outcome it is obvious that the Shadow is to be resisted with all our strength. Warriors reject The Shadow.

      But Jesus also says, “Resist not evil” because evil wants you to play with it. How resist non-forcefully?

      I would say through the exercise of our creative – i.e. positive – gifts. This is why I study evil, tease it, laugh at it, explicate it.

      The Gruesome Gourmet

      My mother loved corpses


      Folded in with the custard; she


      Smoked out the kitchen like a witch


      In Macbeth.


      Taylor’s Toxicology shared shelf with


      Julia Child; Mom often


      Talked Trotsky over


      Soft-boiled eggs. She


      Smeared more Mercurochrome


      Than was strictly necessary


      On juvenile cuts; dabbed with dilated pupils like


      An artist in mayhem or an MGM makeup man


      While Dad ate mute


      Pacifist chili from cans in his room


      Re-reading KonTiki.


      I became vegetarian.


      It’s true what they say about


      Becoming your past;


      When I hear “Lizzie Borden”


      I remember –


      I think of mutton for breakfast in


      Sticky red sauce.

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

      Dormancy –

      Artists spend a lot of time trying to find and develop their unique voice. Purveyors of art want you to copy first – so they can compare it to something they already sell – and put a unique – but not TOO unique – touch on it later.

      These contrasting mandates send the artist down a lot of rabbit holes with no rabbits at the end.

      Before I discovered True Crime my own work annoyed me with its amorphousness. I could not figure out where my sense of doom was coming from. Everyone around me just assumed I was being fashionably angsty. You know! Modern megrims!

      But then I attended the Beth Carpenter trial for capital murder in New London, CT in 2002. The guilty were paraded before us – the hitman, the girlfriend, the coked-up lawyer, the hitman’s son. Frozen in the press gallery (my husband was covering it) our eyes boggled. American law gave the story shape – defense attorneys battled right in front of us with the prosecution bar. The jury, invisible on TV, sat before us dressed as if attending sporting event. Which this was – the outcome in question right up to the end.

      This was thrilling modern theatre – the view (the harbor was visible from the courthouse), the company (Press World), even the food was good – we tried a different restaurant every day (once the jury treated us to an Italian meal.)

      I became an addict of Court TV, segueing to the ID channel (where I appeared on Blood Relatives in 2014.) I began reading the true crime greats of which, it turns out, there are many. A novel I had been struggling with – Model Prisoner (which could have described me) was freed into becoming Woman Into Wolf. I based Find Courtney on 2 famous cases.

      LIZZIE BORDEN:
      “Not I But the Moon”…

      Not I but the moon

      Decrees each loss of blood

      You confided slyly, Besom-Breast!

      I’ll crochet a horsehair head for you and

      Lacework- stitch your flesh, my darling

      You and Scrimshaw Pate – He

      Who Must Know Better.

      Hot wax outlines a new broom’s sweep in

      Sacred dust: chorus of shoe-buttons popping like

      Potato-eyes. Oh, I shall dine on you

      My darlings, rolling you in

      Pig viands, I dredge your souls in

      Righteous lard. I am the sanctified enemy

      Of the paper cut people:

      My hymn shall rock

      The laughing house.

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

      RISK

      What looked like stupidity was only my determination. First I had a determination to get married, then when I discovered my husband was a casual liar (he lied to everybody) I was determined to get rid of my husband. He wanted to travel – I didn’t – I said “goodbye” and divided the assets. He always thought I would change my mind (though he never changed his behavior) and was surprised when I didn’t.

      But Warriors are honest. Warriors are loyal. Warriors are committed to finding the truth and living in its light. So obviously I needed to find another Warrior.

      Grounds for Divorce

      I wanted the house, you

      Didn’t; simple as that.

      I liked the way the roof

      Lost battle to the windows

      You saw decay

      But then I’m always tempted

      By the portents that you fear.

      Decay is just

      Another form of growth. You

      Cultivated virgins; unlike me

      Whose scars are

      Deepening daily

      like my eyes,

      harden like my body, sheltering

      soul-spores readying

      for flight.

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

      Synchronicity

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

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

      Peacock Pavement: The Poet on her walk

      Femininity’s  Everests

      I climb them daily. Envy the crow’s

      wombless contentment

      As I stroll 

      among the old

      wrappers used

      condoms; joints rolled like French

      Letters used abused discarded.

      What the crow envies is my

      Zircon hair; a lunar map of freedom

      Battering-ram jaw 

      baroque nose, the

       Greek depths through which

      My eyes record their wanderings

      Outside the convent wall,

      The stalls, the chained-up lambs,

      The  leaf-clogged swimming pools.

      First act, second act, third act

      Epilogue. 

      Number days by seeking out

      Life’s taproot;

      Marking ages not my own;

      Investing in some future;

      All unknowing what anyone will make

      Of these

      Portentous Pleiades:

      disparate sisters

      Me, myself and I.

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

      Self-Sufficiency

      When looking for approval, you first notice that the “approvers” aren’t in agreement, keep contradicting themselves and shifting their own goalposts.

      This is enough to make a warrior out of anybody.

      How to choose your standards? How to design our path and feel confident about it?

      As a child, I was a sunflower, looking for nourishment I could turn my face towards. People who dampened and depressed, who structured and suffocated, were to be avoided.

      My parents claimed to be interested in physical health (and I wasn’t even completely convinced of that) but mum on the subject of mental health, which seemed to be the purview of adults who’d mastered the wherewithal to “step out of the rat race.”

      As an elementary school student, I was certainly in a rat race. And it looked like a long haul. When we moved to Morocco and I was sent to a school where I didn’t speak the language, life got downright dangerous.

      Luckily there were books. Agatha Christie in specific, who turned out to be the favored reading of travelers passing through Dar El Baraka, where we had been installed.

      Agatha Christie is excellent training in the Art of Being a Warrior. Life in her books is dangerous, but since everyone is lying and pretending to be someone they’re not (“Society”) it’s difficult to tell where the threat is coming from. The Detective uses Clues and a knowledge of Human Nature to figure out The Truth.

      This is riveting stuff for an eleven year old. These skills of judgment, analysis, research and truth-telling are essential for the Warrior.

      Clue Gathering

      Don’t take people at face value

      Check their stories –

      Question values

      Motives,

      Duplicitous

      Suspects

      Hoodwink

      Bamboozle

      Beguile

      Ignorant

      Dupes like

      You.