The FINAL DAY for FIELD GUIDE, ANOMIA GIVEAWAY

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!

Last Ditch Giveaway for last gasp backers! A signed original Anomia deck!

This is your official last chance to back this campaign and to reserve copies of Field Guide to Ambiguity and have your name in the book - the campaign closes at end of day, Thursday June 28.

 I have a special surprise to share with you in the from of my brother in law, Andrew Innes. Andrew is a dear friend, and a mentor to me. Several years back, he invented Anomia, an amazing card game with its own deck that is now five different games and printed in many languages, sold all over the world at this point. He was the first person to tell me that I should go the crowdfund route with my first book - which I wanted nothing at all to do with, but I followed his advice and he was right. He is an example and inspiration to me, and given me much sound advice as we meet over grills, hiking in echoey canyons, and while drying massive piles of dishes at family holidays.

Anomia is a game that never gets old to play, is wonderful and compact to bring on family vacations, and draws out even the most shy. Everyone essentially racks their brains to remember a word in a certain category (Plant, or Broadway musical eg) before someone else, but the words being blurted out (Ficus! Hair!) have nothing to do with one another, creating a glorious, irrepeatable poem of forecfully produced, random words. 

Andrew, like me, is a bit of a philosopher/existentialist, with a twist of magician, and an excellent sense of humor.

His games are also about something that’s hard to pin down, the decks have vibrant, abstract symbols that when matched become a face-off between players, and a random poetry results, with many reasons to laugh really hard.

So get to it all of you dawdlers, reserve your books and win your chance at even extra good fortune and luck! And what’s more, let’s bring this project home. Let’s do it right!
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If you had any trouble with the kickstarter interface, you can also make a donation via Venmo using my Venmo handle @Hannah-Burr-1. Just be sure you let me know what it's for and if you had a particular reward you'd like to get for your donation, referring to the rewards set out on Kickstarter.

Checks are OK too. Made out to Hannah Burr. Thank you

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY - BACK AND RESERVE FIELD GUIDE!