There are two parts to this post:

One is peppy: a giveaway for the last 24 hours of the campaign ending midnight Thursday June 28! If you back or increase your backing I'm out before the end of Thursday, you can win a copy of Andrew Innes' is amazing card game, ANOMIA signed and everything. That story is toward the end of this post.

BACK AND RESERVE FIELD GUIDE
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The other is more personal.

As I'm trying to understand how to resolve the design of this book, I'm realizing that the situations I'm in continue to offer good examples of ambiguous circumstances in which I'd like this book to be helpful.

This book is the opposite of a map or linear process. It's learning to feel situated when you don't know where you are.

It’s learning to feel at home right now without understanding what 'this' is. When real things are at stake too, not just with an elegant little hypothetical or philosophical or slightly inconveniencing conundrum - but when you really don't know if it's going to be OK on the other side.

What the book offers is a structure for exploring - it isn't linear and it doesn't necessarily lead to a concrete place. It’s an inquiry process.

The abstract artwork is somewhat like the strange, fragmented  views that we have in unknown places. For example, how it was with my eyes closed while I was being wheeled from the car through intake and into the emergency room and began to weep. I interacted with about four people and never even saw what they looked like.

Or the unfamiliar smells and sites and sounds in the X-ray lab combining with the pain and the accent of the person that I've never met who was speaking to me.

The foreign way the bedroom is set up for one person with lots of things to elevate arms rather than to sleep next to my partner.

It’s the way it feels to have a friend cut my fingernails.

It was looking at my left hand and not understanding it as my own body because of the nerve block that was placed at the shoulder.

It’s the sensation of metal in my wrist that I wasn't anticipating - not knowing if that sensation will persist or not.

It's every day not knowing if it's still true what my fingers can and can't do, or feel.  What the emotional landscape will be like today.

This book has lists, questions and poetic phrases much like the Elements book. It has ways of going from one page to the next, and for asking questions and exploring what's around you either in thought, writing, sensation or space. There is a core set of artworks that are meant to be in place of the specimens of a field guide and I'm currently parsing out how to best unify the visual language of the entire book and the cover. Mostly I'm running through scenarios in my head while lying down, which is fairly efficient.

Part Two_ a little more pep!

And here's another page called Going through and here's what that page looks like and here's what it says there
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The experience of turning to these pages is simply a tenderness, a gentle balm, and a slight reframe suggested through questions. I don't feel like writing right now because I can't use my hands, but just reading what's there is a reminder that was happening is not unique to me, that's very human and understandable, and is helping me widen the view a little bit, situate myself some, and not feel so alone.

There's an abstract artwork to puzzle over and there are many through-ways in the book via directories placed within these pages so you can also just flip to to find what you relate to or find interesting.

That's what this book is: it's a gentle celebration of humanness and the free fall that is our lives.

My first book came out of a very ambiguous time in my life, and prayer was a huge part of how I found my way through. This is a gentle hand hold, this book, it's very sweet in its tone. When there's a raw moment going on it's a way to get some perspective on it, without needing to be any different than you are, without anything needing to change.

There's a section at the beginning of the book where discomfort and ambiguity are explored: When I'm uncomfortable it's usually a sign that something really uncertain is happening and I want certainty. I want normalcy.

And we don't always get that.

When I was writing an earlier draft I had five early readers. Their feedback made me realize that I want this book to be something that my elderly friends who are falling a lot and whose lives are not looking the same as they did even a few months ago can relate to, I want it to be something that people being displaced from their homes maybe in California or in the Ukraine, or in Syria may encounter and find some kindness in.

I can't say that right now I'm feeling as fun sense of adventure around the fact that I don't have use of my hands for the summer, but I think in a few days I might find this book helpful.

It's pretty ironic that falling is what created my ambiguous situation and that Falling has been my favorite situation in the book.

I think there is a clear admittance on my part that I can't do all that much to be helpful to anybody as another human being, but this is just a way to draw attention to this human predicament we are in, and to talk about it both directly and also obliquely, with some color in form, humor and kindness in the shape of a field guide.

If you are wondering how you can help me right now, you can back and share this campaign. This is also the week my email stopped working properly, so please use yours to share the project.
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