Meditation 013 | Wingbeat

Thank you for being here for the installment thirteen of this newsletter, and the first issue of Volume II. (See: Volume I)

🎵 This month’s piece is in F-sharp major.¹ As we leave another summer behind and emerge into the new but familiar autumn light, I admire the exiting season's final displays of insouciance: apples and pears casually rotting on their branches, rolling in the streets; blackberries left unpicked desiccating on the vine; a quiet settling over the valley. This month's piece serves as a farewell to the sun-laden season we await all year but that leaves with haste, almost unnoticed, as quickly as a wingbeat.

📷 I took this month’s photo on film in the Mt. Hood National Forest in Oregon.² I was making my way to a glacial lake when I found myself in a dense and shadowy wood, one of my favorite places to be, with the sun peeking through the trees.

I invite you to sit with this song, photo, and poem and make them a small part of your day, whether that’s your morning ritual, afternoon break, or your evening wind-down.

As always, if you feel like it, let me know what you think in the comments. I’d love to hear from you.

Thank you again for being here.

---

A Poem

To the Light of September

by W.S. Merwin³

When you are already here
you appear to be only
a name that tells of you
whether you are present or not

and for now it seems as though
you are still summer
still the high familiar
endless summer
yet with a glint
of bronze in the chill mornings
and the late yellow petals
of the mullein fluttering
on the stalks that lean
over their broken
shadows across the cracked ground

but they all know
that you have come
the seed heads of the sage
the whispering birds
with nowhere to hide you
to keep you for later

you
who fly with them

you who are neither
before nor after
you who arrive
with blue plums
that have fallen through the night

perfect in the dew

---

Currently

Listening to

• body by Gia Margaret (Listen)

  • Reminder: I’m putting all the songs shared in the newsletter into this Spotify playlist

Reading

• The Night Watchman by Louise Erdrich (Powell’s)

Sharing

• Two songs out this month on the wonderful Sonder House label:

• My fall and winter instrumental playlist:

• All my songs in Volume I, together for the first time:

• Some personal reflections on one year of Fog Chaser:

Celebrating One Year 🎉

1. Wingbeat in F-sharp major / Recorded in Logic Pro / Written and produced by Fog Chaser

2. Wingbeat / 35mm film (Fujifilm Superia / ISO 400) / Mt. Hood National Forest, Oregon, USA / Order a print.

3. “To the Light of September” by W.S. Merwin, Poetry, September 2003