The Almanac of Wonder and Wander Vol. 1 – 2021
I’m excited to share my first book offering which I wrote in 2021. The first volume of the Almanac of Wonder and Wander chronicles in both informal haiku and haibuno form (picture, haiku, prose) my transition from Portland, OR to Taos County, NM. The book is ~116 pages long. Some example content is highlighted below.
How to Obtain a Copy
DRM Free Ebook in EPUB format only
On demand print copies will be coming shortly!
Contact me (book at hargie dot com) to obtain a completely free copy of The Almanac!
The Almanac is always available free of charge, but if you enjoyed the book you can purchase a copy for $5.46 from me directly
Alternatively, you can purchase from an online retailer. Prices vary slightly by platform but are typically about $3 more.
In full transparency I make $5 per copy of the ebook after transaction and platform fees.
Example Content
INTRODUCTION
I woke up one morning and decided to write an informal haiku every day – just like that. Why? Was it an April Fool’s joke on myself? I am most assuredly not a poet, and I don’t pretend to be one, but I do enjoy playing with words. It is now mid-February 2023 and I’m still going, but the informal haiku has evolved into a new form. I call this personal form haibuno. It is a morph of haiku and haibun that would make a formalist cringe. It started in November of 2021 as a Nanowrimo challenge. This edition of the Almanac is a mix of informal haiku and haibuno – a testing the waters kind of year. It was also a year of intense transition. I moved from Portland, Oregon Population: ~650,000, to Taos County, NM Population: ~34,500. What follows is the story of 2021 told one day at a time…
21 September 2021
First fire in fireplace
many moons of light this year
to guide through winter
22 September 2021
Equinox is here
where the light and dark align
to hang in balance
23 September 2021
The morning anger
drives the disco worm away
the loss is painful
5 November 2021 – The Capitol
Chiles on fresh lines
lines that speak soul or decor
but never taboo
The capital is as many others – sterile, smelly, full of hangers-on, and out of their minds. Up in the mountains are whole towns converted to catering to the wretchedly undermined. They have seen the ghost of the future, and they are scared (and screwed). They buy the vaguest of homemade to cozy up their home for a moment and then throw it all away. The illusory is a bitter sense of irony. We can hide away and pretend that our mysticism saves us, or we can tell the story of who we are now to all who will listen. If anyone can listen, feel, see, or hear any more over the cackle of deprived totality. We are good at making tokens of gesture. I gesture you this, once upon a time there was a person in a cave who reached out across time with the outline of their hand in ochre. A stationary thin line across time that met with mystery. Only the mystery was ignored in favor of the cavorting tornado of caterwaul. When the golden hour turns to blue hour and disappears in less than 10 minutes. That is when the thin line between worlds will open. But we must never speak of it in case anyone is listening.