NEW JOY JOURNEYS

We found more joy in recent books, films, and lessons this week.

 

"Big Joy: The Adventures of James Broughton," co-directed by Stephen Silha and Eric Slade (2013) follows poet, artist, activist, and filmmaker James Broughton on his quest to find happiness.

Photo: Courtesy of "Big Joy"

 

Broughton, a pan-sexual, was a major inspirational figure in the early gay movement in San Francisco, and, eventually, in the whole sexual liberation movement. He finds joy through pursuing his own expressions of sexuality and in his numerous relationships with both men and women, young and old, including one with film critic Pauline Kael, with whom he had a child.

 

Born in 1913 in Modesto, California, Broughton became part the San Francisco Renaissance, and later hung out with and influenced the Beat poets. The documentary includes interviews with Broughton’s close friends and colleagues—including Jean Cocteau, Harry Hay, Stan Brakhage, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Anna Halprin, Armistead Maupin, George Kuchar, Jack Foley, Neeli Cherkovski, Alex Gildzen, Keith Hennessy, and Joel Singer. Texts from Broughton’s journals and writings add depth and context.

Photo: Courtesy of “Big Joy"

Broughton fought a dark side as he battled for his right to joy. He had a terrible relationship with his mother. He was not a great parent to his own child. He struggled with depression. And he triumphed. He found ecstasy.

 

Broughton’s film, "The Pleasure Garden (1954)," won the special jury prize at Cannes. It brought him the opportunity to direct a mainstream commercial film. Instead, he chose to go back to poetry. Freedom of expression, freedom to dip his mind and his body in and out of the lives of his kaleidoscope of loves, was the source of Broughton’s very passionate, colorful, and powerful big joy.

 

He He Oh He

He is the completest zany of a He

He is the immaculately jeu d’esprit

He is the aorta’s jigamaree

-From Hymn to Big Joy, James Broughton

Check out the Trailer.

Photo: Courtesy of Mold Farm

You don’t have to be a mathematician to get joy from thinking about beauty of math. Joy of Thinking is a DVD course, taught by Professor Michael Starbird  and Professor Edward B. Burger, of the University of Texas at Austin, that invites you to open your doors of perception and open your mind about the way the universe works.

 

The course is based on their innovative textbook, “The Heart of Mathematics: An Invitation to Effective Thinking .” Just thinking about the endless perfect patterns of fractals is enough to make you giddy as they guide you through their infinite form.  You learn how the simple exercise of repeatedly folding a sheet of paper offers an example of the classical computational theory of "automata," developed by Alan Turing—the father of modern computing. You learn how fractal processes relate to both the behavior of the stock market and your heart rate.

 

The course takes you on a joyful journey through the 4th dimension, where you can develop an intuition about a world that you cannot see --- a world where a four-dimensional surgeon could remove your appendix without making an incision in your skin.

 

If you try to sort out paradoxical phenomena, like "Buffon's needle," which shows how random behavior can be used to estimate numbers such as pi. A similar needle-dropping model accurately predicts certain atomic phenomena.

 

Mathematics has an endless frontier. The farther you travel down its mysterious roads, the more you see over the emerging horizon. This course is a trip that will leave you breathless.

Photo: Courtesy of Amazon

 

“Happy This Year!: The Secret to Getting Happy Once and for All ,”  by Will Bowen (Grand Harbor Press, 2013) is a practical guide to finding joy deep within the inner world of our psyches.

 

We can control our own happiness and find joy right now, this year, if we take the book’s advice on how to tap into it and nourish it all year round. The author, Will Bowen, is the founder of A Complaint Free World, a nonprofit organization that has touched the lives of more than 10 million people in 106 countries. He is the author of the international bestseller “A Complaint Free World” and has been featured on Oprah, the Today show, ABC World News, CBS Sunday Morning, People magazine, Newsweek, and The Wall Street Journal.

Photo: Courtesy of Amazon

 

“Ignite Joy Now: Lighting The Flame Of Optimism In Your Life Every Day ,” by Paulette Esposito (Author) and Jodi Nicholson (Designer), uses the powerful tool of the daily journal to help you become a “magnet for magnificence and joy in your life.” The book promises that if you use its techniques for at least 21 days, you will change your perspective on how you look at the world.

 

Esposito is an inspirational writer and speaker, Master Success Coach, and Spiritual Intuitive. She's known as The Ambassador of Joy, specializing in success, life and career coaching. She also created The Center of Self Discovery, through which she helps clients tap into their potential to improve performance and transform and heal their lives. She has worked closely with Jack Canfield, the #1 Success Coach in America best known for “The Chicken Soup for the Soul” books and “The Success Principles,” and incorporates those insights into her work. As a Spiritual Development Coach and Interfaith Minister, Paulette creates celebrations of life, rites of passage, and helps people connect to their inner wisdom.

Photo: Courtesy of On the Chancel Steps

A recent Huffington Post article, “Happiness Tips: 9 Simple Steps To Joy,” offers this advice:

 

1. Buy Some Bliss

2. Get Older

3. Forget Self-Improvement

4. Make Tough Stuff Work

5. Spend 21 Minutes Focusing on Your Relationship

6. Try a Tearjerker (movie)

7. Love Your Commute

8. Take Credit for Giving

9. Fake It Till You Feel It

 

Check out the rest of our posts on Joy this week inArts/Design,Food/Drink,Mind/Body, Place/Time, Nature/Science, andSoul Impact. And enter this week's photo competition. The theme: Joy (Deadline, August 4th, 2013).