Greetings, and happy July! Holy moly, is the year really halfway over? Or halfway begun? Hope you are having an enjoyable summer.
If this newsletter has a theme, it’s a persistent one for me: Over time, what changes, and what remains the same? It’s not exactly, “The more things change, the more they stay the same,” or, in the prettier French version, “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.”
I’ve been thinking lately about how we can visit the same places through the years and gauge differences — in the places, and in ourselves. The same perhaps goes for people and the relationships in our lives that stay or go.
Is renewal itself a kind of entropy, in the grand cycle of creation?
A few weeks ago while staying at my dad’s house, I hung up two hummingbird feeders on the front porch. I wrote a few years ago about how, while sitting on a feederless porch one day, a hummingbird suddenly zipped in from the open left side and hovered a foot or so away from me, as if to say, “Um, where’s my sugar water?” (This was sometime after Dad had his stroke in August 2021 and we started visiting a lot more frequently.) My dad used to supply them with nectar, and it’s said that hummingbirds often return to the same areas. I took the hint, so now during my summer visits, I hang out feeders and delight in the tiny migrators’ reappearance, marveling at their behavior — they aggressively strafe each other and buzz around the yard to defend their time at the feeders, and sit on nearby maple branches to rest, preen and wait their turn. They are amazingly loud, given their size.
Below is a video I took on Dad’s porch last month with my phone. If you turn your volume way up and-or wear headphones you can hear the intense hum of the wings (along with a few other birds and maybe a screeching squirrel from the wilds of Candler, N.C.). It’s not Oscar-worthy, but you get the idea.
I put the two feeders out when I was there in early May but saw no action. Last month, I hung them both again. All was quiet the first day, but on the second morning, from inside the living room and through a closed storm door, I heard the distinctive vibration. I peeked out and sure enough, supplying a burst of joy that cracked my face open into a huge smile, there was my first ruby-throated hummingbird of the year. Could it have been a repeat customer? I’ve had a hard time attracting them in Clayton, so they’ve become a Dadland treat.
Where do we humans know we can always, or at least usually, find nourishment? To what places of safety and security can we return?
For the next few days, when possible, I sat outside in the mornings and evenings to hang out with them and try, as futile as the endeavor is, to photograph them. In this mutual revisitation and recurrence of a familiar pattern, I noticed some changes. No hummers drank from the feeder closer to my porch seat while I was there; they stopped only at the farther and higher feeder, which hangs off the open left side — perhaps because it is more visible and feels safer. In years past I hung a feeder from one of the two maple trees in the front yard, but it attracted more bees and ants than hummingbirds, and that became a total hassle — mostly for me, when cleaning the feeders. More importantly, though, as I later learned, a bee sting can be fatal to hummers, which explains why they skedaddle so quickly in their presence.
What dangers do we know to avoid, whether innately or from previous experience?
I’ll be curious to see what unfolds with the birds and whatever else during my next visit westward for Dad’s 81st birthday, which is July 7. His nursing home was recently sold and the name and signage changed, so it’s a big difference that’s being advertised from the administrators as not — though the rumblings from the staff are not good. We shall see. It’s too terrifying to think about how anti-care the health-care business can actually be. The facility is the same, with some of the same great nurses and CNAs remaining, for now (thank all the gods and goddesses), but there has always been a noticeable amount of attrition in the two years Dad has been there, with more than a few questionable actions and lack of appropriate ones.
How do we roll with uncertainty and changes beyond our control, or the general lack of predictability in life? What about predictions and expectations that fall short?
I’ve enjoyed carrying on my dad’s hummingbird tradition, though I always feel bad taking the feeders down when I leave — I zoom in not unlike they do and migrate back east after about a week each time. But let’s face it, hanging out bird feeders of any kind, whether at home or at my Dad’s, is partly for my own entertainment and photography practice, but I do appreciate providing nourishment for the creatures. Never mind the food chains and natural selection processes that ensue.
So with the hummingbirds, a lot was the same in this most recent experience — same porch, chair, feeders, water:sugar ratio of 4:1, the Seals and Crofts “Hummingbird” song bubbling up in my brain. But a lot was different — I rarely saw more than one hummer at a time, I saw none at the closer feeder and none in the maple tree, and I turned my chair to face them instead of stalking them from the side. Why hadn’t I done that before? I was able to get a few so-so shots, in very tricky lighting — I’m pretty sure they like to hide from me, staying mostly on the far side of the feeder.
Also, in other same-but-different bird news, it appeared that a raccoon figured out how to attack the squirrel-proof seed feeder hanging on a shepherd’s pole by the sidewalk. I’d thought that was an inaccessible place for them, but no. That makes three expensive feeders busted in the past few years thanks to those nocturnal hunters. (At least I’m assuming the destruction has been the work of a raccoon, or a few, as opposed to a black bear, which is also entirely possible — we viewed a raccoon on the porch-camera footage when it happened with feeders I hung from one of the maples a while back.)
During that week in the Asheville area, the theme of same-but-different continued. I visited familiar eateries and went to a yoga class with a teacher I really like at a studio I really like. One morning, I walked around Lake Junaluska, a lovely spot about 20 minutes west of my dad’s house. For a few meals, I got different food from my usuals. The class was a singular moment in time that had never happened and will never happen again, even if some of the poses (and fellow students) were familiar. At the lake, which has become a go-to spot in these past three years of pilgrimages to Dadland, I saw several cormorants in their usual spot, drying their wings and fluttering their throats to cool off. A man I’d met there before stopped me, noticing my camera, to alert me to a bald eagle up high in a tree (I took a photo of a brown blob among green leaves with large yellow talons hooked on a branch). But in the “different” category, I saw two swan families with their cygnets (squee!), a new experience for me there. Same path, different slice in time.
At the Beaver Lake Bird Sanctuary in North Asheville, also a frequently visited spot, I noticed the water level in the lake was higher than usual. I was hoping to see a green heron or a great blue heron, each of which I’d seen there before. No luck on the former, but I saw several photographers focused on a great blue from many yards away. Otherwise it was pretty quiet, with the tree canopy filled in, as usual in the summer. Same path, different slice in time.
How can we remain open to new experiences on well-trod paths?
A dear friend (hey, Gayle!) happened to be in the area while I was there, and she suggested a trip to one of Asheville’s salt spas. I’d been to this one with my sister, but many years ago and when it was downtown. Its new location is an upgrade, and I loved it so much I went back two days later. Same business and principles, still with copious amounts of pink Himalayan salt; different facility and experiences.
Another dear friend (hey, Martha!) was in town with friends to see Lee Harris, an intuitive and energy worker I’ve followed for a few years. I enjoy his free monthly energy updates and paid content in his Portal community, and have mentioned him in this space before. I’d also bought a ticket to the show, and after appreciating his work only through cyberspace, it was a real delight to “meet” him in person and experience his full, 3D being. It was also a delight to meet my friend’s friends, but it was surreal to have two Clayton-area dears in my hometown orbit in the same week. Talk about a lot of loops being tied!
And in a true same-but-different time warp, I had lunch with a high school friend (hey, Betsy!) I’d run into at a grocery store in March (we had lunch a few days after that). We’re the same people we were in the early 1980s, but we are also not. We have similar memories of our shared experiences, but we also have different and discrete recollections from those four years. We remember different people, and some of the same. We’re both agog and aghast that 2025 will mark … 40 years (!) … since we graduated.
How do our life experiences and relationships shape us? Do we have a hand in shaping other people?
The same-but-different theme continued last week during our mostly annual beach vacation with my sister’s family. Same two condos, same ocean and pool. Same go-kart place for the boys, same actual speedway for Matthew and our nephew, who is 14. He first came on this coastal trip from Western North Carolina when he was about 3 months old. Watching him move through the week every year has been a trip in itself, like looking at the rings in a tree trunk. His interests change but he also enjoys revisiting certain experiences. This year a brand-new thing for all of us was renting jet skis. That’s a topic for a whole nuther newsletter, but I’ll just say my sister and her son had a total blast. She was a pro, who knew? I was absolutely terrified 98% of the time, but it had nothing to do with being Matthew’s passenger. But hey, a new thing! It was cool to get a fresh and unique perspective on the sound side of the island.
What is the point in willingly doing new things that may scare the crap out of us? Is safety a mirage?
We’ve already picked out the dates for next year’s vacation, but I’m trying not to leap forward so much. Meanwhile, other same-but-different experiences unfolded this year. The marsh at Fort Macon that I frequently visit to spy on birds had been drastically shaved — the tall grasses and cattails whacked down to the soggy ground, a few dead trees removed. Same spot, drastically different views. I didn’t see any oft-present white ibises, instead noticing a lot of mourning doves, a few (rarely seen) killdeer and a marsh rabbit where I’d never seen one before, though they are plentiful around the fort.
My sister and her son and I visited Cape Lookout, familiar to me but not them. I drove us along the scenic route to the ferry at Harkers Island, and my sister remarked on how different the area is from, say, nearby Beaufort and how it felt like a world apart from North Carolina itself — mental notes I’d made myself on previous trips. The lighthouse at the cape, which I have ascended to enjoy spectacular views, is closed for repairs, and the beach in front of it has been substantially rebuilt in an effort to preserve it and the keeper’s house. Same but different. Ever-changing, thanks to Mother Nature and the nature of water, time and tides.
How do we absorb and process change? What remains the same along the way? How do we change in relation to fixed objects?
My main takeaway from this reflection is a path analogy or metaphor. I think there is something magical about putting ourselves on the same tracks over and over, especially physically, and allowing things to happen without trying to control outcomes. In the past 12 years, since moving back to North Carolina after spending six years in Washington, D.C., I’ve found several places to walk — and walk and walk and walk, appreciating the different encounters with wildlife, scenery and people. I let my mind unspool and, unless I get too mental or am listening to a podcast, try to keep my eyes, ears and pores open to my surroundings.
Maybe familiarity breeds a kind of safety and comfort that allows whatever wants to surface in and around us to do so, although there are always dangers and pitfalls to be aware of in nature and life in general. And familiarity, as the saying goes, can also breed contempt — things we grow to love can sour, or we can simply outgrow them and they us. Also, we can fall into the trap of choosing the familiar — even if it’s harmful or unhealthy — just because the fear around making a change feels too great. The devil you know, and all that.
Part of why I return to known places when I’m visiting my dad, Ayurvedically speaking, is to pacify the quality of vata, the ethereal element associated with air, space and movement. Even if I am in motion at these places, walking, their familiarity helps to increase the quality of kapha, with its earthly properties of solidity, reliability and groundedness. Uprooting myself so frequently in the past few years has made it clear that I need to find ways to grow more anchors, and I like to think that the time I spend in nature while in Dadland helps me be more available and helpful to him and able to navigate some of the difficulties of his situation. I am not always successful.
How do we measure external changes against internal? How do we weave what happens to us and around us and around the world with the people and relationships in our lives — with who we are fundamentally and who we are becoming, or unbecoming?
In the way you can’t win a lottery if you don’t buy a ticket (never mind the odds; it’s just a trite but clear analogy), you can’t have joy-filled experiences without putting yourself out there. Those are usually the most unplanned, unexpected moments. And, yes, sometimes we are faced with truly terrifying and unwanted occurrences, or we engage with fear willingly, but perhaps the joy magnets we attract help us cope with challenges and difficulties. That’s how it has worked for me, anyway. Joy is nourishment and fuel. There is no such thing as having too much of it. And it’s great when shared.
What is your relationship to same-but-different, and to joy?
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Bonus round (a.k.a more joy magnets):
> Also under same-but-different, check out this story* about a motivational voicemail from a GRE test-center worker in Boston that a woman had saved and then shared with her sister before she sat for the exam three years later. It’s unreal — the reminder call came from Tameka Rooks, who took it upon herself to deliver pep talks to many potentially nervous students. In this case, the focus is the same single voicemail shared between sisters (which went viral). Rooks said, “Miss Emilia, this is what you studied for, this is what you worked hard for. Bring your best girl confidence. Bring your best girl magic.” It’s about the same exam (more or less) but from different slices in time, the same voicemail still reverberating and inspiring. (*From my employer, full disclosure, and included here for you as a gift article.)
> As a traveler, I really appreciated this same-but-different New York Times story about a man from Arkansas who translated a passion for memorizing parts of the world via Google Maps for use in an online game to visiting some of those places IRL. Trevor Rainbolt said that following that urge made him “feel oddly familiar with a lot of the world, like you’ve been there before.”
> Last but not least, and because three p.s. offerings feel better than two, here’s a same-but-different pearl from a yoga teacher I have followed for a long time, Donna Farhi. It’s an ongoing theme for her — she said much the same in her 2003 book “Bringing Yoga to Life.” In an email July 1, she wrote about how the ability to do certain poses is often a prerequisite for being able to attend an “advanced” workshop or study with a particular teacher — and how this is so unrealistic, because our bodies change (and therefore so should our practice). Many physical attributes, she says, “were arbitrarily dished out by the Celestial Design Committee at birth.” She ends with:
What interests me now is seeing how yoga practitioners, peers and colleagues demonstrate [they’re] “advanced” through gracefully accepting limitations and working with them to create beautiful and unique versions of practices that are testaments to progress. It can mean patiently rebuilding capacities and tending to and sustaining those so important to ease in daily life. Most of all, to be advanced is to go beyond “us” and “them”; to be generous, kind, and caring to others. You never know the hundred faltering steps that led a person to where they are today. Every body has a story.
Because advanced is any movement that draws us closer to the truth of who we really are.
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See you next time. Take good care.
Great post! Today I needed this. Thanks for writing those wonderful and amazing words.