Alysse Aallyn

Tag: Writing Community

  • 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

        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

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

        The Lovers

        My husband and I frequently refer to each other as our “cuttle bone/cuddlebone.” We keep each other’s warrior blades sharp. When trying to explain how I became a warrior, deepest emotional relationships we form by choice paint a picture of a quest for support and validation. My coed boarding school had rigid social requirements of dating and communicating – there was a “Boys End” and a “Girls End” and every evening representatives from each side would meet in “Central” and exchange baskets of messages. At Girls’ End these messages (called “KOBS” or “Kindness of Bearer”) were stored in a stocking hung beside the recipient’s mirror. This was our earliest form of flirting! One lover I chose because his KOBS were beautiful – always expressed as free-floating poetry – another because he was imaginative and ambitious – a third because he was forceful and honest. It was how these boys came alive on the page that was significant to me.
        My last boyfriend at that school – whom I was to marry eleven years later – we are still married to this day – presented himself as an ideal combination of all of these, plus he was gorgeously beautiful. But before we could come together, many dragons needed to be killed.

        Leaving the Coven

        A craven of cronies stood
        Between us & God –
        God demands clones
        God hated short skirts.

        A damnation of judges
        Stood between us &
        Knowledge; truth exists
        Only in service.

        A clowder of cretins
        Stood between us &
        Art: “Don’t be disturbing”
        “Never trust instincts.”

        From the depths of
        This oubliette
        You drank the koolaid
        Guaranteeing survival

        Cherishing passions that
        One day would rescue me –
        So I could grow up
        And write you this poem.

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

        Creativity –

        When I was 11 I saw a 3,000 year old Greek play in a Greek stone theatre and was very taken by all its mechanisms of chorus and emotion. When we went back to the boat I sat down and wrote my own play, Chrysothemis, about Electra’s other sister. I couldn’t help it, I had to reflect that emotion back. It was a hot day and everyone else went swimming, but a Warrior would have finished that play.
        I finished the play.

        Clap Back

        When the universe calls


        You have to answer


        Mimicking what you hear


        Imitating what you see


        Until you’re brave enough to grab


        The balls of fire


        And juggle them for yourself.


        Then you get offered a job


        Juggling other people’s fire.


        Good work for some but not for warriors


        We call those people


        Mercenaries.


        We need to juggle our own fire


        And if you think learning the basics


        Was humiliation enough


        You won’t survive this.


        There’s a lot of stumbling and


        Silencing.


        I was what’s politely called a


        “Late Bloomer.”


        But I did finally


        Bloom.


        And when you’ve created your first


        And maybe only


        Immortelle


        It’s worth everything.

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

        Conflict

        It’s in Conflict that warriors emerge. My uncle insisted people in authority be “respected” and said whether they were worthy of respect was not the point. My parents were never that crass. It was a subtle game with them. My mother referred conflict to my father; we were ”hurting” her by not being the people that she wanted. It was hard to take seriously. But “discipline” quickly transferred to my father and he was a much scarier proposition. He was physically violent – spanking me, breaking down my door, visibly losing his temper and then further enraged over losing his temper. This was a whirlwind I could not ride and it hardened me against him. Some facts he refused to accept, actual truths he rejected with “No.” I understood that my mother was too weak to face things but Dad claimed to be a fearless seeker in life. It made me disrespect him.

        Detaching From Dad

        Dad taught us to stand up for ourselves


        Except around him.


        Dad enjoyed being silly


        When we were little.


        Entertaining story teller –


        Teased us to obedience.


        When I said wild horses couldn’t drag me


        He played wild horse.


        He was the captain, and


        Life wasn’t ship-shape


        When I was a shape-shifter.


        He wanted to go to Europe


        Without my eldest sister


        She called her congressman


        To change Daddy’s mind.


        He institutionalized her in


        Switzerland


        Two thousand miles from


        Our new home.


        I was stubborn and


        Honest: the worst combination.


        When I was twelve and Genevieve fourteen


        He sent us to school across


        Oceans.


        As my dad had before me


        I stood up to uncles and teachers


        Because I had to respect somebody


        Might as well be myself.

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

        Summer

        My family typically spent a month each summer cruising on a thirty-seven foot sloop called the Phoenix. Four children and two adults relating in such a confined space shaped the warrior skills of my adult personality, including a taste for exploration, for reveling in the physical pleasures of water, wind, storm & sun, for the absolute dissociation of reading and thinking, and for reading aloud, also group card games such a Michigan and Oh Hell played during wild evening parties called “Phoenix A-Gogo.”

        Trailing

        When we sailed I was fore & aft &

        Up the mast –

        Exulting with the spinnaker –

        Bikinied & brown with

        Binoculars in hand –

        Mapping unseen islands

        In the geography of my heart

        Scoring constellations

        To the cosmology of my brain –

        Reading by the light of

        Photo-luminescence –

        Foraging with seals & jellyfish

        Flying higher

        Dreaming farther

        Fish-hooking memory forever.

        Mother warmed the compass

        Father was a sextant,

        Sisters manned the jibs, but

        I owned the reacher-drifter –

        Favorite sail

        Which makes the most of

        Any air

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

        The Goddess –

        One of my earliest jobs was an office work temp – ending up as receptionist at an architecture firm. In my hegira through multiple workplaces I did not find one where I liked the lowly way I was treated. But Warriors, by definition, don’t put up with the Status Quo. Seeking to ratchet up my power level I used my training and auditioned to be a dancer. Things improved mightily! Although I still encountered some mistrust and scorn, on the whole, I achieved my goal of feeling plugged into the Universal Power Source.

        Artistic Expression

        What if you could


        Be Yourself at work –


        Release


        Every day feelings


        Invoking ancient


        Raptures?


        Though mother disapproved and


        Dad worried, I


        Launched my


        Physical self


        Into the Universe and


        The Universe


        Loved me back.

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

        2. Ego

        From the very beginning I didn’t like doing the same thing as other people. What was the point of that? If someone ordered the same food as me, I changed my order. I was surprised that people would want to do the same thing at the same time. As I grew older, enthusiasm was ruthlessly damped down and my possibilities seemed to harden. Who other people thought you were was “ego”. And they wanted you to stay in that place. Much as I wanted to be admired, maybe even cherished, I could see this categorizing was limiting. A very bad thing. But how to get out of it seemed a conundrum. How can you view the situation you’re in from a point of view you don’t actually have? Lucky for us, there’s imagination! If we are really lucky, imagination crystallizes into Art.

        I discovered we don’t have to settle for Ego, for making ourselves distinct from other people. Artists are shape-shifters – they all the best lines, all the brightest colors, giving themselves the best possibilities.

        When the “multiverse” became popular, I wasn’t surprised. I was used to living several lives at once.

        Being Wrong

        Warriors don’t “settle.”

        We never “stay put”.

        Warrior Essence is

        Exploring new territory.

        Territory that scares you

        Features you don’t recognize

        Sparks uncomfortable feelings.

        I learned to like this.

        Roving continents alone

        Doing everything

        Wrong.

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

        Resistance –

        It’s a different challenge coming in to oneself in a large family. I’ve never been certain since which part of me is my real self and which part is my sisters. Certainly the push-pull with my 18 month older sister Genevieve had a significant effect on me. You could argue that she forced me to become a warrior, in order to resist her.

        Genevieve was a natural leader – she rewarded complicity and punished rebellion. The escapades I adventured on with her – stringing the entire house with yarn like a maze, filling the kitchen with sand – were enormous fun, even though they got us into trouble. But I often wanted to be alone and discovered that if I climbed into the highest branches of the cooper beech I could read peacefully. No one could get at me there.

        Reader of Trees

        I was the only one who knew your bark

        Was better than your bite

        I could resist you there

        Climbing higher just to

        Become myself

        Dragging books into branches

        Like a jaguar storing prey – fairy tales –
        The Iliad –
        Egyptian magic –
        That was how it started

        Even during thunderstorms that

        Shook me to my core

        I resisted you by

        Refusing to come down.