Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Memoir

  • 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

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

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

    Solitude

    I’ve always enjoyed being alone, where I can sort my thoughts and groom my feelings and arrange my objectives. This fact was startlingly obvious from the first, and later I found out that people like that are called “introverts’. We draw energy from being alone, whereas our energy is depleted by contact with others.

    My most profound warrior resistance, so ancient I can’t recall its inception, is my allergy to being “directed.” For my poor parents it must have felt like their third daughter never emerged from ”the terrible twos.”

    My father was a very self-directed man, happiest with just my mother for company, so I had a model of resistance to being “molded.” He explained that he never could work for anyone else because their management style always rubbed him the wrong way. He formed two companies that he directed, and towards the end of his life was the kingpin or a charitable organization with a religious bent. He was grateful to that religion since they’d helped him with his conscientious objection in World War II, but he was never a believer. My mother was more mystical, with a strong response to beauty and design, who felt the most important things in life cannot be expressed. A wonderful challenge for a writer.

    Conscientious Objection

    I said No to

    Trooping past the David statue

    Attending parties

    Avoiding concerts,

    Wanting to be alone to write.

    I kept a diary my sisters

    Jeered at and it was

    Pretty stupid – training ground for

    Plays and proms

    Novels and stories –

    And I still make notes on

    Everything.

    “You’re not important,” said my

    Cohort –

    “You have to become important

    To have anything to say.”

    I knew that was wrong – every

    Artist I had studied –


    Every thinker –

    Bubbled like a kettle

    From inception.

    Reading tealeaves is as

    Necessary as

    Finding tea.