J.O.R.Y.

This issue of J.O.R.Y., although the first to be officially released to the public, is actually the second created. The first was loosely buried somewhere in a preexisting hole in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, in Southwestern Washington State, in what had been just days before a free and independent outdoor marketplace created by the inhabitants of a temporary Rainbow civilization. The fate of this first issue which had been hailed as a collaborative masterpiece, a work of holistic genius, is a mystery to the creators of this publication, and without retrieving the original, it cannot be re-created. Although nobody who was involved in the production of J.O.R.Y. intended to let go of the finished product “prematurely,” that is, before copies were made, there is a vague sensation that we are subconsciously enacting a legacy, a new myth. Perhaps there will be a search for “the lost first edition of J.O.R.Y.” for years to come, or maybe someone has already found it and is enjoying it with their friends now. Maybe they would be so kind to share it with all of J.O.R.Y.’s friends. If we think of J.O.R.Y. symbolically as a character or person that has, in its own right, a voice, an individual uniqueness, having its individual experience and personal self-aware story, itself being an expression of its community of creators and the intentional force which comes through them, J.O.R.Y. looks like, at least through this lens, the timeless archetype whose purpose in sacrificing itself is for the common good: three individuals coming together in holy union for providing the birth; the arrival to its family; the burial; and now, in this issue, the rebirth or resurrection. Since J.O.R.Y. fears no loss of itself, it being a timeless and unstoppable act of creation dedicated to the common good, these events were only a natural expression of J.O.R.Y.’s identity. J.O.R.Y. would like to dedicate itself to the richly alive yet vacuous memories of its former form and identity--not only of the art inscribed into its pages, but to the Experience and lovers that gave birth to it. “I am a gift,” J.O.R.Y. says. “Those who have held me and modified me have only treated me with a special reverent awareness and have felt the gift of being part of the process, a sense of honor in being part of my story. Each soft touch of the hand, the light of the eye, the rubbing of paint, every contribution tickles me with an ecstatic aliveness! In my sense of aliveness, I know the pleasure of my creators, and I’m excited to keep growing, organically evolving and free-form.” In this dedication, J.O.R.Y. promises to serve you creators, you the readers, the writers, the artists, the thinkers, the sentient who are in awe of themselves as part of the sloppy and beautiful process of Life within some kind of grand Universal pattern, until it has been fully realized. With love, All from, of, with, through J.O.R.Y September 21, 2011 IPRC, Portland, Oregon