. . . we’ve reached our goal for collection $300 this year!  David made out his donation to “the cause.”  What is the cause?  What does Faraway mean?  For the answers to those questions, I refer you to the first thing Faraway ever published, a statement of purpose penned by none other than yours truly, in our first issue way back in April, 2007.

            It seems only appropriate, being that none of us know anything about publishing, have ever been published, or have ever earnestly submitted something for consideration for publication, to start out the first issue of this journal with a statement of purpose. What business do we have putting together a journal? What are our qualifications? Probably none. But an anecdote might illustrate what we hope to achieve.

            I was speaking with a woman from a local writer’s club when she asked me, “Are you a writer?”

            “Well, an aspiring writer,” I humbly replied.

            “Don’t say that,” she said, shaking her finger. “Have you ever written anything? Then you are a writer. The act of touching pen to paper, or fingers to keys, makes you a writer.”

            You have to be a writer to be published, but you do not have to be published to be a writer, was essentially what she told me. In order to be a writer, you have to be able to refer to yourselves as such, to proudly claim that passion and occupation as your own, even if you cannot claim the outward attributes of a writer–being published, getting paid for your work, being recognized as a writer.

            And it was heartening, for aspiring writers too easily become frustrated by these false qualifications and unreachable standards, when all they really need to do is write.  Faraway is a means for aspiring writers to make themselves into actual writers; the difference is one of effort. The same goes for artists in other mediums: paintings, photos, poems and odes.

            We want to give young writers the chance to have their work seen by others, without the rigorous and pretentious guidelines that scare them away from submitting to known journals. We want writers to develop and evolve, to feed off of each other and become better, and to be recognized for improving. We want to establish a community of support for those pursuing authorship as a pastime or a career. Finally, we want to create a means by which we can make ourselves immortal.

            This last may seem absurd, but it gets to the other point of this journal’s title. When trying to think of a title for this endeavor, I for some reason picked up the Epic of Gilgamesh, which I had first read a few years ago. The epic was written around five thousand years ago, and is one of the earliest surviving examples of human literature. It is an odd tale in many respects, but the central plot is one that people still wrestle with: the search for immortality. Gilgamesh, a king in Sumeria, on witnessing the death of his close friend, sets out on a journey to find eternal life. His quest takes him to the heavenly realm where the immortal being Utnapishtim, known as the Faraway, resides. Gilgamesh is terrified at the thought of death and asks Utnapishtim what he might do to avoid his friend’s fate.

            Utnapishtim offers him several opportunities, but Gilgamesh, as a human with faults, fails in these endeavors, and is forced to return to the world of the living. Coming to his own kingdom, he stops and looks up in awe at the walls of the city that he rules. He realizes that eternal life in the sense of inhabiting a bodily form forever is impossible. But immortality in the sense of making a lasting impact, of leaving a mark, requires only dedication and passion. For Gilgamesh, immortality was achieved by building great cities. For us, immortality may be achieved through art.  As the Epic of Gilgamesh proves, the art survives for millennia, though Gilgamesh himself has been gone for over five thousand years.

            So we invite you to read what we have written, we who love to write and read, to watch us as we grow, and to become writers yourselves. And we will try not to take ourselves too seriously in the process.

So now, almost two years later, here we are.  We may not have reached a million readers or published a thousand authors, but every author I’ve come across in my work for Faraway has been enthusiastic about our cause.  I’ve had many writers thank me profusely for giving them the chance to be published, when the journals we organized Faraway against would not even accept their submissions.  And I’ve had many people like David Kentner donate money generously, because they believe that arts are important to civilization, and that everybody should be able to participate in the community of arts, not just the elite few who make it into McSweeney’s or wherever else, while thousands of others are turned away.

If any of this resonates with you, then Faraway is for you.