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| Power Style Wellness Connections |
Claiming Chaos
By Mary Cartledgehayes
For my birthday this year, my beau took me for a ride on a
Ford Tri-Motor airplane. The Experimental Aircraft
Association brought the plane to Bowman Field in Louisville
and offered flights over a long weekend.
The last time I flew on a tri-motor was in 1967, and as soon
as I heard the engines and smelled the airplane gas,
I was a giggling fool. You know how a little kid in a stroller will see something
delightful and start kicking his feet and waving his arms and chortling to herself?
That’s pretty much what I looked like that day.
Later, I had one of those accidental conversations you sometimes strike up with a
stranger in a store. I was wearing my new Tri-Motor T-shirt, and a gentleman
asked if I’d seen the plane when it was in town. When I told him I hadn’t just seen it
but also had ridden in it, he wondered if the flight was bumpy.
“No,” I said mournfully. “It was perfectly level and calm.” (I’m one of the few people
who enjoys a bumpy flight; it reminds me of…what else?…riding the Tri-Motor as a
kid.) It is now three weeks later and my life is far bumpier than any Tri-motor flight
I ever took. Bumpy in a good way, but even so…funny how even good bumps can
leave you rattled.
Outside the leaves are becoming luminous in oranges, golds, and reds. The
elegant shapes of tree trunks are revealing themselves. Other hidden sights
emerge: a foot-long bird’s nest 50 feet above my head at the joint of tree
branches, a tributary of Beargrass Creek hidden, until now, by thick underbrush.
The gray squirrels are at their most industrious; yesterday I saw one carrying an
entire cob up a tree, only a few nuggets of corn left to make it valuable. Autumn
holds these rare moments, and also tranquility.
Inside, nothing is tranquil. Moving boxes occupy the living room, while two sets of
heavy duty shelves sit empty in the middle of my office/studio. I haven’t packed up
the kitchen at my former residence yet, and the key was due back yesterday. I
have an essay four days overdue and counting; and I can’t find the duffle bag
(box? suitcase?) into which I tossed my unmentionables. You know that stage you
reach when you put items in a box, not because they belong there but because
they fit? I hit that stage six weeks ago. And you know the final stage, when you
heave everything in sight — shoes, dog food, electric toothbrush, your address
book — into one big box and label it “leftovers”? I spent three straight days in that
stage.
Moving was bound to leave me discombobulated, and absolutely disorganized, for
weeks. And yet I chose to relocate. What was I thinking?
I was thinking that the time was right. When I moved to Louisville (almost four
years ago now), I selected a one-bedroom apartment with a pretty fireplace. I
wanted the comfort that a small space can offer. As time went on, my life got
expanded to take up more room. The apartment, though, stayed the same size.
Cozy gave way to crowded. The situation wasn’t helped when one of my books
went out of print, and, rather than condemn 2,000 copies to a landfill, I purchased
them all. You may not know this, but 2,000 copies of a standard-size book fill one
closet completely and take up every inch of floor space in two more closets.
Finally, this year in July, I realized that the cramped space was affecting my ability
to think largely and to create wildly.
For now, two area rugs headed for the cleaners are on the couch. My desk chair
is in a corner of the second bathroom with boxes stacked three-deep between me
and it. My lingerie continues incommunicado.
What I’ve done is sacrifice a little tranquility for abundance. Abundant room to
display books, art supplies, and the delicate Royal Doulton Mary Had a Little Lamb
figurine Mother gave me for Christmas. To play My Baby with the dog, in which he
chomps down on one of his stuffed animals, and I say, “Nooo, Koko, that’s not
YOUR baby; that’s MY baby” and wrestle it from him while we growl softly at each
other. Room, eventually, to lie on the floor and breathe deeply while I let my eyes
rest on empty space around me.
The Ford Tri-Motor on which I flew was the first plane purchased by what became
Eastern Airlines. Later it went to Cuba. After that, for a little while, it was the
Dominican Republic’s version of Airforce One. In 1986 or so, shortly after
someone in the U. S. purchased the plane, it was caught up by a tornado or
similarly strong wind, roughed up, and slammed to the ground. That’s when the
Experimental Aircraft Association purchased it and kicked off a 12-year restoration
project. Roughly two decades later, it came to Louisville for the benefit of people
like me, who got to ride in it, or, like the gentleman in the store, delight in the sight
of it flying.
Which just goes to prove that disruption, and even chaos, are not to be feared.
Sometimes, they contain new life, new energy, and even new joy, all just waiting
for us to claim them.
By Mary Cartledgehayes
For my birthday this year, my beau took me for a ride on a
Ford Tri-Motor airplane. The Experimental Aircraft
Association brought the plane to Bowman Field in Louisville
and offered flights over a long weekend.
The last time I flew on a tri-motor was in 1967, and as soon
as I heard the engines and smelled the airplane gas,
I was a giggling fool. You know how a little kid in a stroller will see something
delightful and start kicking his feet and waving his arms and chortling to herself?
That’s pretty much what I looked like that day.
Later, I had one of those accidental conversations you sometimes strike up with a
stranger in a store. I was wearing my new Tri-Motor T-shirt, and a gentleman
asked if I’d seen the plane when it was in town. When I told him I hadn’t just seen it
but also had ridden in it, he wondered if the flight was bumpy.
“No,” I said mournfully. “It was perfectly level and calm.” (I’m one of the few people
who enjoys a bumpy flight; it reminds me of…what else?…riding the Tri-Motor as a
kid.) It is now three weeks later and my life is far bumpier than any Tri-motor flight
I ever took. Bumpy in a good way, but even so…funny how even good bumps can
leave you rattled.
Outside the leaves are becoming luminous in oranges, golds, and reds. The
elegant shapes of tree trunks are revealing themselves. Other hidden sights
emerge: a foot-long bird’s nest 50 feet above my head at the joint of tree
branches, a tributary of Beargrass Creek hidden, until now, by thick underbrush.
The gray squirrels are at their most industrious; yesterday I saw one carrying an
entire cob up a tree, only a few nuggets of corn left to make it valuable. Autumn
holds these rare moments, and also tranquility.
Inside, nothing is tranquil. Moving boxes occupy the living room, while two sets of
heavy duty shelves sit empty in the middle of my office/studio. I haven’t packed up
the kitchen at my former residence yet, and the key was due back yesterday. I
have an essay four days overdue and counting; and I can’t find the duffle bag
(box? suitcase?) into which I tossed my unmentionables. You know that stage you
reach when you put items in a box, not because they belong there but because
they fit? I hit that stage six weeks ago. And you know the final stage, when you
heave everything in sight — shoes, dog food, electric toothbrush, your address
book — into one big box and label it “leftovers”? I spent three straight days in that
stage.
Moving was bound to leave me discombobulated, and absolutely disorganized, for
weeks. And yet I chose to relocate. What was I thinking?
I was thinking that the time was right. When I moved to Louisville (almost four
years ago now), I selected a one-bedroom apartment with a pretty fireplace. I
wanted the comfort that a small space can offer. As time went on, my life got
expanded to take up more room. The apartment, though, stayed the same size.
Cozy gave way to crowded. The situation wasn’t helped when one of my books
went out of print, and, rather than condemn 2,000 copies to a landfill, I purchased
them all. You may not know this, but 2,000 copies of a standard-size book fill one
closet completely and take up every inch of floor space in two more closets.
Finally, this year in July, I realized that the cramped space was affecting my ability
to think largely and to create wildly.
For now, two area rugs headed for the cleaners are on the couch. My desk chair
is in a corner of the second bathroom with boxes stacked three-deep between me
and it. My lingerie continues incommunicado.
What I’ve done is sacrifice a little tranquility for abundance. Abundant room to
display books, art supplies, and the delicate Royal Doulton Mary Had a Little Lamb
figurine Mother gave me for Christmas. To play My Baby with the dog, in which he
chomps down on one of his stuffed animals, and I say, “Nooo, Koko, that’s not
YOUR baby; that’s MY baby” and wrestle it from him while we growl softly at each
other. Room, eventually, to lie on the floor and breathe deeply while I let my eyes
rest on empty space around me.
The Ford Tri-Motor on which I flew was the first plane purchased by what became
Eastern Airlines. Later it went to Cuba. After that, for a little while, it was the
Dominican Republic’s version of Airforce One. In 1986 or so, shortly after
someone in the U. S. purchased the plane, it was caught up by a tornado or
similarly strong wind, roughed up, and slammed to the ground. That’s when the
Experimental Aircraft Association purchased it and kicked off a 12-year restoration
project. Roughly two decades later, it came to Louisville for the benefit of people
like me, who got to ride in it, or, like the gentleman in the store, delight in the sight
of it flying.
Which just goes to prove that disruption, and even chaos, are not to be feared.
Sometimes, they contain new life, new energy, and even new joy, all just waiting
for us to claim them.