Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Psychological Thrillers

  • 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

      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

        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

      4. 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.

      5. 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.

      6. 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.

      7. Secrets of the Self – becoming a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

        Rebirth –

        I’m convinced the main attraction of the evangelical religious movement is that it offers the opportunity to be “born again.” But I believe that option is always available to you without the necessity of signing up to be a cog in a “movement.”

        When I was twelve years old I read a James Bond novel in which he is washed up on a beach and needs to be nursed back into life without any of the previous appurtenances of his personality. I was very taken with this idea. Of course, it has literary antecedents in all the “castaway” and adventure stories of John Buchan and Robert Louis Stevenson. The question revolves around your essential self: do you have one? Or can even that be remodeled and rebuilt? This is the question warriors try to answer.

        Warriors pare their needs down. We keep ourselves ready for action. We are shapeshifters and time travelers – if that sounds attractive to you, keep listening.

        The first rebirth was rather brutal. At age 12, I was sent to live with my father’s sister and uncle and four boy cousins in Wayland, Massachusetts. Since these people didn’t believe anything my father believed I found this cross-training startling, and the more I behaved in my father’s image, the more I was punished. My uncle was enormously excited to have a pubescent girl in the household, snuck into my bathroom, groped and French-kissed me. I did my best to fend him off, while crushing on one of my cousins. In intervals, we exhibited social politeness. (I attended dancing class where white gloves were mandated for touching specimens of the opposite sex.) I also was taught to ski. Sort of. This hot-house atmosphere lasted only nine months.

        My parents simply refused to listen to, believe in, or pay attention to any of this. I realized I needed to become a different person –the person I truly was, underneath, the person without all this reflexive training and behavior. And the question was, who was that?

        The Kilning

        “Shame” means

        Should Have Already Mastered

        Everything. Excoriating

        That you couldn’t

        Eviscerating

        Failure on top of

        Guilt.

        Once fire retreats

        Examine the scorch marks.

        Yellow mud

        Fuses into azure glass

        Shining for

        Eternity.

      8. 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.