Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Memoir

  • 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?

        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.