Overcoming Flight [carley rickles]
Carley Rickles
The world is planned from above. Aerial images and maps are subjective representations of what is below. They come from a source point - caught still - through fleeting circumstances. Is life able to be captured more authentically by humans or machines?
I learned about irrational fear from my mother. Hers was our Spaghetti Junction exit bridge. We would travel an extra three miles through rush hour traffic to avoid it.
My first irrational fear was flying. It took me ten years to learn how to deal with it. I’m not sure you ever truly overcome or abolish a fear, but you learn how to function with it.
The first time I ever flew alone was to Morocco when I was 18. I cried on the plane there. On the way home, I got stranded at Charles de Gaulle, so, I cried again.
Prior to this I flew short distances with others and not often.
Since this time, I’ve developed a methodology for making this anxiety probing experience enjoyable. I enjoy the event of flying now.
Flight Ritual:
The view from the window seat of a plane is the best view in the world.
I want the window seat. My fear of flying does not equate to a fear of heights. I think in part I don’t understand how planes stay in the air. I don’t care if you explain it to me, it doesn’t make any goddamn sense. I get claustrophobic on planes (and in cars, and in elevators, and in windowless rooms, and in tall buildings).
The view from the window seat of a plane is the best view in the world. The only way you can experience it is through air travel. I have convinced myself that this is true. I usually take lots of pictures from the window seat. I imagine my background in urbanism and landscape architecture have influenced the kinds of land patterns that I find interesting. I am particular about those images I capture. I look for ironic and sublime compositions of land types. I imagine one day to use them for something related. For now, they sit on my phone and appear graphically in my work as backgrounds.
2. Embrace self.
A large part of my rituals for overcoming flight has to do with being with myself and giving myself the benefit of anonymity. The older I get, the less time I find for myself to be by myself. I try to embrace flying as one of the rare times I can put the phone away, put the web away; just draw or something. I know that airplanes have wifi now and thus earth communication, but I am going to ignore that detail for some time to come.
3. Finger paint.
I order a red wine on the plane and make a mess of my sketch book, finger painting shapes to draw over later. This is a practice I used when I am unsure of what to draw. I aimlessly smather watery colors across my sketchbook and return later to create an image. This makes me laugh and i relish in that moment of innocent messiness.
4. Drawing in the background.
In addition to wine drawing, I regularly draw too. There was a time when all I did was draw. These days, it's harder to get myself to sit down and just draw. When I board a plane I rely on it.
This has spurred several conversations with those sitting beside me. I have had several cute kids peeping through the seat at me. Once a woman even gave me her favorite pen to take home and try. There is something special about drawing in the background of ordinary life and choosing to not stop for others. I don’t like attention in public, but in this instance I choose not to care. I like to tune out those around me and entertain myself. I think it's the anonymity thing.
5. Emotion, let it rip.
I've had a lot of emotional experiences with flying. Perhaps it has to do with facing fear or the difficulty of separating rationality from irrationality.
There was that time I cried on the way to and home from Morocco.
I remember the emotional response to flying when I lived in Denver - it made me sad to realize that coming home no longer meant landing in a cloud ofAtlanta trees.
It could be that for a period of years flying was my link to being in a long distance relationship. It seemed that every time I boarded the plane I was left with an unsolvable dilemma.
Usually flying to somewhere is filled with wonder and flying from somewhere is left with a new nostalgic oddness that is hard to place immediately. I’ve grown to accept that travel comes with its emotional hangovers - its best to give them alone time.
I try to listen to music that embraces my emotions. The red wine and drawing usually pull this out too. They all work together. That pause in the air allows the space and time to come back down.
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