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July/August 2001

 

Transcending the Tyranny of Time

We seem to always be running out of time, literally and inevitably.  This can create panic, a sense of falling hopelessly behind in achieving our lifetime goals, a feeling of self-depletion, as if we are in a losing race with an all-powerful and merciless opponent, time itself.

Transcending negative conceptions of time, requires a bit of serious relaxation and a new outlook.  Maybe we would be better off attending to the task at hand instead of worrying about perpetual time-binds.  Recall the Lord Mayor's reply in The Yellow Submarine when Young Fred frantically tells him about the calamitous approach of "the blue meanies" and asks, "What shall we do!"  The ancient Lord Mayor, who is in the process of leading the Pepperland Band, simply says, "Finish the quartet."

Perhaps we can learn to think in terms of completion instead of depletion.  The passage of time is a natural thing.  It need not be a trauma. No matter how long we live, some dreams will remain unrealized, some projects unfinished.  Life is a limited, finite situation and accepting it as such, in itself, can bring a certain kind of creative liberation.

-- Bill Joyner


"Don't be outraged, be outrageous!"

--Tom Robbins

Dear love, did you not guide us into this world? Did you not follow us as a loving friend all of our days, and even into the darkness beyond all knowing?  Now, please rest your hand upon us as time falls away, carry us when we stumble and cannot go on, and bring us at last to the eternal homeland of your perfect love.  Amen.

It's easier to find a traveling companion than to get rid of one.

-- Art Buchwald

More And Less
Linger long toward the evening.  Relinquish more and more 'till all is one with none.  A billion details can be scaled down to one.  Take a deep breath, then slowly, slowly, let it go.  Beneath the undertow find the overflow.  Allow less and less to happen more and more

--BJ

...to refuse food and drink... is more than pleasure, it is the joy of the soul

--Tolstoy

 

Phone (323) 466-2157 / Fax (323) 466-2150 / email ihmla@pacbell.net 
5515 Franklin Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90028

 

Don't just do something, Buddha said, stand there.

--Daniel Berrigan

When one is so far advanced that every shadow and every echo has disappeared, so that one is entirely quiet and firm, this is the refuge within the cave of energy, where all that is miraculous returns to its roots.

-- The Secret of the Golden Flower

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.

-- Washington Irving

"What does this little symbol mean?" some have wondered.  I'd like to claim, in true Taoist form, that it means nothing at all. But, in fact, I did first draw it as symbolic of a bird in flight encircled somewhat by a circle of necessity.  Over the years, it has opened up in a way that expresses how I'd like the world to be, safe & experimental, open & free.

--BJ

 

America The Beautiful Fund
***********************
1730 K. Street, N.W. Suite 1002
Washington, DC 20006
Write for information about their FREE SEEDS offer!

Kiki Joyner - Air Borne Creations
7365 Main St. Suite 111
Stratford, CT 06614 - 203-373-1353
keekstar@juno.com

 

Funny Times Subscriptions * P.O. Box 18530 Dept. 4AL * Cleveland Heights, OH, 44118

 

The Cinema Circus Movie-Go-Round

Celluloid Friends Worth Revisiting

Bill Joyner

 

"There are only a few great movies, with most films, it doesn't matter whether you see them or not."

-- John Malkovich

 

Billy Budd Young Terrence Stamp will always own this role as the innocent, fun-loving sailor who runs afoul of the conspiring first mate, played with such menacing wickedness by tough guy Robert Ryan.  Peter Ustinov is the conscience-stricken, duty-bound captain in this visualization of Herman Melville's short story.  As the final authority on board, the captain feels compelled by wartime rules of the sea to condemn Billy Budd to death, although he suspects that the young seaman has been framed or set up by Master-at-arms Claggart (Ryan).  Why does Claggart so despise and persecute this guileless, completely likable angel of a boy?  An elderly shipmate, known as Dansker, nails it right on the head when he is asked by the presiding officer of the court, "In your opinion, is there malice between the Master-at-arms and Budd?" "Aye," he replies, "Master-at-Arms bore malice toward a grace he could not have.  Pride was his demon, and he kept it strong by o9ther's fear of him.  Billy could not understand such a nature.  He saw only a lonely man --  strange -- but a man still, nothing to be feared.  So Claggart, lest his world be proven false, planned Billy's death."  This film is not exactly light entertainment, but it has great depth, as well as unforgettable scenes and characters. -- BJ

 

What Are People For?  Essays by Wendell Berry
The message of both the TV programs and the sales talks is that 
the watchers should spend whatever is necessary to be like everybody else.

 

When Schulman, a historian at Boston University whose first book was "From Cotton Belt to Sunbelt," speaks of the "Southernization" of American life, he isn't talking about Jim Crow and the blues.  He means their milder reincarnations in the anti-welfare, Lynyrd Skynyrd-listening South that sloughed off its regional shame around the time Richard Nixon became president.  Southernization was an attitude that spread north - suspicion of government, anti-elitism, racial resentment, a highly personal religiosity.

-- George Packer on...
The Great Shift in American Culture, Society and Politics by Bruce J. Schulman

 

THE NEW YORK TIMES
Washington:  Maureen Dowd

We want big. We want fast. We want far. We want now. We want 345 horsepower in a V-8 engine and 15 miles per gallon on the highway.  We drive behemoths.  We drive them alone.  This country was not built on H.O.V. Lanes.  We don't have limits.  We have liberties.

We'll bake the earth.  We'll brown & serve it, sauté it, simmer it, sear it, fondue it, George-Foreman-grill it. (We invented the Foreman grill.)  We might one day bring the earth to a boil and pull it like taffy. (We invented taffy.)

If rising seas obliterate the coasts, our marine geologists will sculpt new ones and Hollywood will get bright new ideas for disaster movies.  If we get charred by the sun, our dermatologists will replace our skin.

We will drill of oil whenever and wherever we please.  If tourists don't like rigs off the coast of Florida, they can go fly fishing in Wyoming.  We won't be deterred by a few Arctic terns.  We don't care about caribou.

We want our refrigerators cold and our freezers colder.  Bring on the freon.  Banish those irritating toilets that restrict flow.  When we flush, we flush all the way.

We will perfect the dream of nuclear power.  We will put our toxic waste wherever we want, whenever we waste it.  We have whole states with nothing better to do than serve as ancestral burial grounds for our effluvium.  It can fester in those wide open spaces for thousands of years.

We will have the biggest, baddest missiles, and we will point them in any direction we like, across the galaxies, through eternity, forever and ever.

We will buy, carry conceal and shoot firearms whenever and wherever we want, as is our constitutionally guaranteed right.  (We invented the Constitution)  We will kill any criminal we want, by lethal injection or electrocution.  (We invented electricity)

We are America.

 

 

 THE 2002 SEED CATALOG CALENDAR!

Short reviews and stories about films on video that you might like to check out.  The format will be much the same as the 2001 Calendar - The Soul Seed Circus.

THE 2002 SEED CATALOG CALENDAR

"The Soul Seed Movie-Go-Round"

William T. Joyner, Editor

Printed and spiral bound 11˝" x 14" calendar available for advance orders for $7.50 per copy including mailing cost -  for more information contact Bill Joyner 
via U.S. Mail:  P.O. Box 3411 / Sarasota, FL 34230 
or email Bill at tscwtj@hotmail.com

The 2001 Seed Catalog Calendar - "The Soul Seed Circus" is still available for $4.50 
(includes postage)


The Seed Catalog
William T. Joyner, Editor
THE SEED CATALOG is available by mail for an annual suggested donation of $5.00
-- or any expression of interest. I try to do at least 6 issues a year. Thanks for tuning in!
--Bill Joyner / P.O. Box 3411 / Sarasota, FL 34230

Send me your feedback - comments, suggestions and contributions welcome

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