AerospikeDB vs. Cassandra on Google Compute Engine

Last month I began a new job at Aerospike (Twitter: @aerospikeDB, http://www.aerospike.com) I've been learning a lot about the company, and every day I learn more and more about NoSQL, and find a new way to be impressed at our product, and the people behind it.

Today, there was a new report released from another Blogspot account, at GoogleCloudPlatform.blogspot.com. It mirrored an earlier report from March 2014 released regarding Apache Cassandra, a different open source NoSQL database.

Many customers say, "I already have a NoSQL database. We're already running Cassandra. Why should I switch?" or "How does AerospikeDB compare to Cassandra?"

Some people try to answer those NoSQL questions simply looking at the popularity of key word searches, or the frequency of a NoSQL vendor on resumes. But I have an axiom, which is derived from "quantity ≠ quality":

popularity ≠ performance

Today's blog post at Google Cloud Platform answers those questions, and points out how popular misperceptions need to be challenged from time to time. These two separate announcements on Google Compute Engine have a very similar headline, but tell a very different story.

• Aerospike Hits One Million Writes Per Second with just 50 Nodes on Google Compute Engine (4 Dec 2014)

• Cassandra Hits One Million Writes Per Second on Google Compute Engine (20 Mar 2014)

A million writes per second! At first blush, that's impressive. If you were a busy professional reading tweets, you might just notice the similarity of the number, shrug and move on. This is why it is always important to "double click" to get into details. Because its a questions of how much hardware you have to throw at a problem to produce those same numbers.

300 vs. 50

In the Cassandra test, which was a write-only test, Datastax was able to achieve 1 million writes-per-second using 300 Google Compute Engine virtual machines. They generated the traffic using 30 more machines. Giving credit where credit is due, they were able to achieve an impressive 10.3 ms median latency, with 95% of writes within 23 ms.

In the Aerospike write test, we were able to achieve the 1 million writes-per-second using 50 Aerospike servers. Traffic was generated from 20 client nodes. 83% of the writes were 7ms. And 96% of the writes were accomplished within 32 ms.

Another detail to note is that the Cassandra test was using 170 byte test writes, whereas Aerospike was using a 200 byte payload. So that's an additional 17.6% more raw data throughput.

AerospikeDB was able to do +17.6% more throughput on 16.67% (1/6th) of the hardware. A back-of-the-napkin calculation would suggest that the throughput per server on Aerospike was about 4 MB of data per second, whereas Cassandra got 566 KB. That would be just about 7 times the throughput performance.

Which would you rather pay for? 300 servers or 50?
We scaled even better in reads; we only used 10 machines to do 1 million reads-per-second.

There's a lot more to be read in the studies, and I encourage everyone to do their own research, benchmarks and testing into the claims of any vendor, including my own. Feel free to go to Aerospike.com to discover more about our product architecture, download the software, read the docs, and get in touch with the user community and follow what they've been doing.

If you want to get in touch with me directly to learn more about Aerospike's NoSQL DB, you can contact me via these mechanisms:

Peter Corless
e pcorless@aerospike.com
t @PeterCorless
m 650-906-3134

Arthuriana Update

Today I wrote an essay about what I consider "canon" for Arthuriana. I inadvertently also blew away my links to Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Meh! I'll work to restore it now.

Where Have You Been?

I haven't updated my blog in a while. And now I am back again. So, where have you been, Peter-o?

For the past few years, I was a busy, busy boy working full-time, followed by a somewhat lazy-boy.

From 2008-2011, I worked as a tutor and then a teacher's assistant at John Muir Charter School, on the site of San Jose Job Corps Center (SJJC). It was a great job! I worked mostly teaching Algebra I, and preparing the students to pass the California High School Exit Exam (CAHSEE). I also worked with the staff of the Nevada County Special Education Local Plan Area (SELPA) to ensure that the necessary subset of our students had their Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) or Section 504 plans up-to-date and reviewed, ensuring they qualified for the new exemption to the CAHSEE under California law. It was the kind of work that made a profound difference in the lives of many at-risk young men and women.
 
However, in June 2011, I was let go due to a decision made by Muir to ensure all their teachers at the site had K-12 Single Subject Secondary Education credentials. Since my credential is in Adult Education (not K-12), it meant the end of the line for me. Now, almost a year later, I look back at it as a wonderful experience that I dearly miss. I hope that everyone at the Muir site, indeed, the whole the Job Corps Center are doing great this year! I miss all the teachers and students there.

Since then, I have been doing personal tutoring. I had a wonderful opportunity over the summer to act as a docent and English tutor for a visiting foreign exchange student from France. More recently, I have been doing tutoring in AP US History, English, and Geometry for Los Gatos high school students through TeamUp! Tutors. And I've also snuck in some private consulting for a creative principal in the movie/animation industry.

For those familiar with my work and efforts of recent years, most of those initiatives are on hold: Flowers in the Cracks, the Global Understanding Institute, and many other wonderful ideas just tailed away into silence, or were shelved due to circumstances. I reserve the right to revive them at any time, but for now, they are sleeping dreams. There are other ideas I have percolating, but it is not yet time to mention them.

But one thing I can talk about is my new web site: petercorless.com. I've just begun to flesh it out. With the recent changes in policy now allowing Californians to again be part of the program, I've rejoined as an Amazon.com affiliate. So I started putting links back to the old Green Knight Publishing products. Expect that to flesh out over time. And also expect to see more links from me under an Arthuriana topic, and eventually a section for history, etc.

I Must Learn to Walk Again

Upon the climbing switchback path
Rising to the apt-named Goat Rock Trail
Listening to my heart's rhythmic math
Repetitiously inferring that life is frail

Yet resolved enough to keep its rapid beating
Over dirt and stone and gnarled grey root
Catching sight through trees of sunlight fleeting
I soldier upwards with plodding boot

Shedding barefoot I carefully climb to stand upon the boulder
Looking down from lofty bluff to somewhat face my fears
Yet soon enough we slide away and again my pack I shoulder
Gazing at this setting of the orange sun I feel in full my years

As I followed down into the placid dusk a thought came to me then:
If I do seek to truly love, I must learn to walk again

Armistice Day, Veteran's Day

This was posted by me as a comment to another journal on OKCupid. The writer wrote about Veteran's Day, and made what I considered a few minor, yet specific errors in her otherwise well-written essay.

First error: "The holiday was established as Armistice Day in 1918 to honor soldiers who have served this country in the Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy."

Second error: "It’s not a day of remembrance, but of recognition."

I thought I'd put my comment here in my journal as well. First, to give paragraph breaks. ;) Secondly, so others who read my own journal may see where I stand on the issue.

~~~

Just a point of historical correction. The first Armistice Day was declared in 1919 by Woodrow Wilson to commemorate the end of the war. As the years went on, Congress decided to formalize the purpose of the Holiday, and passed an Act of Congress. As Wikipedia puts it: An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday; "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

It was only after World War II and Korea that Armistice Day changed in meaning, from the dedication to world peace, to the commemoration of Veteran's service. In a way, I believe that this disenfranchised many people, such as the civilian contributors to wartime efforts, and those that strive for peaceful outcomes -- to ameliorate present conflicts and prevent future ones. If we returned to the original intent, then the vast majority of the world, civilians and soldiers alike, can feel invested in the cause of the day.

Lastly, I must correct this point of yours. For it is a day of remembrance. Indeed, around the nations of the British Commonwealth, it is still called "Remembrance Day," in commemoration of the Armistice and those that fought and died to achieve the peace that follows war. To remember, they wear the red poppy, symbolizing the fallen soldiers, strewn like flowers on the field.

Call me a traditionalist, but I believe that we should all remember that 20 million died in the First World War. 72 million in the Second World War. And, especially in the latter conflict, and to the present day, it is the civilians who suffer the vast majority of casualties. A mother huddled in a house, sheltering her children from the onslaught around her, knows the same -- if not greater -- threats and fears of battle as any soldier. All-too-often she and her children suffer the same fate the soldiers do. Armistice Day is now called Veteran's Day. Yet truly recall and reflect this year on the origins of the holiday, thank you.

~~~

This is not to disrespect the contributions and sacrifices of anyone in uniform. Indeed, anyone who knows my past will know the work I have done in analysis and commemoration of military history. Yet so long as we segregate the holiday to honor only those who wore a uniform (about 10% of the U.S. population), it bifurcates our populace, with the majority of the civilian population seeming only to mark the day as one of increased shopping discounts. How do we ensure that all people would reflect on the dangers of our world, and those who strove, and still work to keep us safe from them?

Ninety one years ago on this 11th of November was the original Armistice of the Great War. There was not a Second World War yet. Indeed, they had hoped that it would be the "war to end all wars." Sadly, there would be no "peace for our time." And through this very day, chaotic, violent wars are still being fought in dozens of conflict zones spanning both hemispheres. What can we do between now and the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, the 11th of November 2018?

For me, and for some certain friends of mine, we are returning to an original intent. We are personally referring henceforth to the day as Armistice Day. Not out of spite to any veteran, but to remind all -- civilian and military -- that the origin of the national, indeed, global holiday was to ensure that we never again commit our nations to the horrific destructive methods and ends we, and our forefathers, sought in the past. That we seek a world where the amelioration and end to such horrors is a goal and an ethical standard we all must commit ourselves to.

So how about you? Would you support returning to the original intent of the holiday, and to call it Armistice Day? Should we specifically commemorate the uniformed veterans only, or should we consider the entirety of those involved -- civil government as well as military, those who serve in NGOs, the war correspondents, the peacemakers and the peacekeepers, the civilians and refugees. Can we use this day, once per year, to honor all those who suffer from war, and those who contribute to the cessation of hostilities. Can we commit ourselves, united again to the cause of world peace?

Wasteland Wandering

I walked under sun from El Alamein to Benghazi
Upon paper-dry chips and hard cubic faces
Caught in the barrens no man survives
But camels and bedouins and novelists

November is come past these sixty seven years
Of long-forgotten ribcages and burnt up boots
Failed crumbling attacks and Devil's gardens
All I could think of were the trees of Palermo

Yes, you left me to die without letter or love
What less should I expect from Fata Morgana?
Qattara swallowed me up then spat me out whole
That salty leviathan of vast dessication

As I sat and thought of your just-past birthday
Wondering if you would forgive all my bloodshed
The stars rose and the world turned frigid
With a shift in the phases came the British offensive

Right before me a shell took off his leg below the knee
Yet behold, unscathed I have no such crippling excuse
Why I never returned was due less to Allied assault
More instead to the cowardice bred from absolute failure

Ten years later in a sunset darkened cafe in Messina
I saw you beside that American from the broad boulevard
Who had deftly avoided Kesselring and captured your heart
Orders were clear to make a new retreat back to Cyrenaica

For all the twenty five pounders that thumped the horizon
Enduring crushing commands I strove so hard to trump
The inexorable advance of time in its long, drawn-out turns
I never truly suffered more or wished to die

Until the moment I watched you kiss him

About this poem

This poem was inspired by recently watching the movie El Alamein and by the West End Games boardgame I worked on decades ago, Desert Steel. It is informed through the knowledge gained by research on the North African and Mediterranean campaigns via innumerable books, magazines, movies and simulation games. A tip of the cap and bow is also due to T.S. Eliot and the Arthurian authors of the Grail legends. And, of course and ultimately, it was inspired by the historical deeds of hundreds of thousands of individuals who suffered through the Second World War conflicts in North Africa and Sicily.

Oh Good Heavens!

I just looked at the calendar, and realized how many months it has been since I've posted anything to my blogs. I've been busy over the summer, and am now employed full-time as a CAHSEE Specialist at a charter school in San Jose. It's good work!

Aside from that, I've shelved and delayed a lot of my plans for the Global Understanding Institute and Flowers in the Cracks. Partially due to some organizational disappointments. Also due to exhaustion in getting the new job!

Even so, I have plans to eventually get them going. So no worries with that. Life is nearing a new equilibrium, so I feel more comfortable coming up for air here.

I've been more active in Facebook than here recently. I believe I'll spend a bit of time going back over my Facebook posts and links and see what I can bring over here.

Where I Have Lived: 107 West Tremont Avenue

View Larger Map

I've lived here, from c. 1965-1970.

Before that I lived for a brief time on Shakespeare Avenue, though I am not sure of the address there. We always just called the house "107." If you ask people in my family, that's still what we call it. "Remember 107?" Yeah.

We loved that house!

Fire by BART Tracks Suspicious

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the two-alarm grass fire by the BART tracks was deemed suspicious by assistant fire chief Andy Smith.

The two photographs I took of the fire were uploaded to the Your Views section of the San Jose Mercury News:


Union City Fire 2 - 17 May 09


Union City Fire - 17May09

Please rate them!

-Peter.

Union City Fire Near BART Tracks - 17 May 2009

Smoke pouring over the barrier wall lining the BART tracks near 11th and D Streets in Union City, California, 6:00 pm, 17 May 2009.

UNION CITY, CA (17 May 2009) - Peter Corless - Just before 6:00 pm, a tall plume of dark smoke could be seen rising over Union City in the East Bay between Decoto and Whipple Roads. The source of the flames was a stand of trees lining the BART tracks near 13th and F Streets.

Flames cresting over the heights of the neighborhood houses consumed the eucalyptus and cypress trees lining the west side of the tracks. The barrier wall near the tracks served as a firebreak, but there were gaps in the wall where chain link fences exposed brush that could serve to spread the fire.

Homeowners on the east sides of the tracks near the intersection of 11th and D Streets doused the bushes near the barrier wall with buckets of water and garden hoses, in attempts to keep the fire from jumping over to threaten their clustered housing units. Crowds gathered on all the lawns to see if the fire would be contained or further endanger their neighborhood.

Within minutes, police and fire units were on the scene. The fire had burned down a long row of trees and advanced north and south through the trees along the tracks. However, the center of the fire had already shown signs of burning through its fuel, leaving charred trunks of blackened trees smouldering.

Flames rising over the barrier wall lining the BART tracks near 11th and D Streets in Union City, California, as seen from near Railroad Avenue, 6:02 pm, 17 May 2009.

So Predictable!

In the news: Mathematical model to forecast divorce

A British mathematician, James D. Murray, observing couples for but 15 minutes together, has created a sort of "Voight-Kampff" test to determine whether a relationship is humanly natural and likely to live on for a long while, or, like artificial replicants, are doomed to suffer a shortened life.



How can he tell? How people deal with each other in casual conversation. Humor is part of it. Conflict management and resolution styles are also part of it. Our different relationship styles, when compared with our partner's, will determine whether we are good long-term matches for each other. You can read Dr. Murray's presentation to the University of Minnesota in November 2004 online.

Fascinating work. Something we might wish to reflect upon as we flirt, posit and compare notes on romance!

Enjoy!

-Pete.

Spring Approaches

The darkening dusk of evening
So peaceful on a President's day
The light in the window leavening
Letting winter chill fall away

Spring approaches yet not quite
Water freezes after darkening dusk
Or in the shadows of low-canted light
Flowers wilted within wet withered husk

Yet spring approaches once again
That is the promise of the year
Triumphant blossoms remember when
It is proper for their ilk to reappear

Blossom in your heart as lilies do
Like lilacs and cherry and the rose most fair
Yet abide until the winter's through
Until the chill has left the air

Sit with me in the wan sunlight
Endure the coldness of the season
Ponder the flowers in struggling plight
How most fragile life shows nature's reason

Logic implicit in the strength of flowers gentle
Shows how we may thrive remaining most elemental

Valentine's Salvation

Cover my cuts in balm of love
Wounded and embarrassed by failure
Burned and charred by ashen end
Buffeted by rebuffed attention

Valentine then looses the dove
And through miracle most peculiar
Puts a heart to gentle mend
Though the softest-worded mention

"You are loved," and "I love you."
Recognition of each other's worth
Eases pains and ends the grief
That impales the strongest on ire's spike

So hearts may freely beat anew
We seek across this networked Earth
To crown counterparts with floral wreath
And share our souls with those alike

Be my fond darling, and I'll truly be yours
I love you my brothers, my sisters, even more than myself
Dearest mother, or father, or fair sweetest child
Valentine's salvation thus sacredly heals

Though generous love we manifest cures
The best elixir found on any alchemist's shelf
Whether passionate, silly, or modest and mild
This balm is best applied as each party so feels

Thus may you find a good doctor on this day's anniversary
And may Valentine himself tend your heart's garden nursery

2nd Iranian Literary Arts Festival, SF, 5-6 February 2009

Poetry about heart's love, healing life, and a homeland

30 years ago, the United States and Iran had the nationstate equivalent of a lover's quarrel. The divorce was terrible. As in such things, it was the children of Iran who suffered, and many were forced to leave home. Yet slowly, over time, the diaspora of Iranians around the world have used their beautiful language to help heal many of the old wounds and make sense of the world.

Belonging, the collection of Iranian poetry from around the world produced by Niloufar Talebi and her colleagues at the Translation Project, is an exquisite bi-lingual collection of such expressions. With English and Farsi on facing pages, the book is a visual depiction of the mirrored, reflective mind maintained the international Iranian community. Thinking of their new homes, and remembering their homeland.

The title is an imperative towards harboring a heart of bittersweetness: Be Longing. And a recognition of that conditional feeling of inclusiveness: Belonging.

The collected poetry comprises a sensuous world remembered and imagined, filled with lemons and oranges, romantic flowers, dull drab days, novelties of life in the Western world, old fondnesses of Iran, matter-of-fact realities, scathing ironies, and infinite personality quirks.

The free festival event this week, in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library, promises to bring the black-and-white words on a page to full color and lively bloom. Hope to see you there!

-Pete.

25 Things About Me

This is cross-posted from Facebook.

Rules:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right hand corner of the app] then click publish.)

1. I keep a toy hobby horse in my car, named Bucephalas, named after the horse of Alexander the Great. It was awarded to me for playing the role of Gareth Beaumains, a character based off Arthurian myths in an online roleplaying game.

2. My name is mentioned as an inventor on six U.S. patent awards. #6,721,793 (2004), #6,728,773 (2004), #6,885,999 (2005), #6,959,289 (2005), #7,031,943 (2006), #7,426,495 (2008). However, after filing these patents, I transferred positions within Cisco and then was laid off in 2001 before they could be further developed or turned into industry standards.

3. During my undergraduate stint at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, an article featuring me appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It was about the growing ubiquity of computers on college campuses. My mother was quoted as saying, "Kids today take to computers like ducks to water!"

4. I just bought energy saver light bulbs for my apartment.

5. The hat I often wear, with the Eye of Horus embroidered on it, was gotten in 2006 at the public performance in San Francisco for the Martin Luther King, Jr. day festivities, following the Freedom Train ride up from Palo Alto.

6. Kathy is the most common name of women I have been romantically involved with. There have been five so far.

7. There are seven completely full bookshelves in my living room, two more in my room and the hall, and two new ones that I got last year that I need to shuffle books into.

8. I privately commemorate, when I am mindful, 11:11 am to recall Armistice Day of 1918, and 11:11 pm to pray for peace in our future.

9. My favorite constellation is Orion.

10. I own a kalimba. I got it at a Renaissance Faire in Califormia one summer along with an audio tape of African music. The best I can play on it is the theme of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 4th Movement.

11. Beside my softball glove on the shelf is an Incredible Patent Picker Move Maker Machine from the 1974 Parker Brothers boardgame The Inventors.

12. I own a complete modern English edition of the 1086 Domesday Survey conducted by King William. I once wished to use it as the basis of an Arthurian roleplaying game.

13. When I dropped out of my Aikido and Kendo dojo, I left all my bokken there as a gift for others to enjoy. My teacher, a sufi, warned us all, years before 9/11, that there were terrorist training camps across the world which would one day attack the U.S. He said his training was preparing us for that day.

14. Other than a bent and bruised pinky or toe as a kid, which I never had x-rayed to be sure, I have never broken a bone in my body.

15. My favorite bakery in the world is Lord's Bakery on Nostrand Avenue at the diagonal junction with Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. I always try to get a chocolate chip cookie there when I go back to New York City. The service is often brusque, but the buttery taste of a good fresh cookie is worth it! Even though it is on Nostrand, I call the place "Lord's of Flatbush."

16. My first job in California was at ComputerWare, doing technical support on the Macintosh. The year was 1989. It was my first taste of Silicon Valley California culture. Odwalla juices and warm hugs replaced Manhattan's caffeine and suits-and-ties. I really liked the difference.

17. I write poetry for women I have never met, often inspired just by seeing their profiles on online dating sites or interacting with them via Internet roleplaying games.

18. I own a pair of Roman caligae (sandals). The longest I ever walked in them was a weeklong hike along Hadrian's Wall from Newcastle to Carlisle in England, in 2006. My feet were blistered for a month.

19. I keep a jar of the fortunes I get from fortune cookies on my shelf.

20. While I have been a millionaire in the past, since I lost my fortune I feel like I am a nicer guy. I was a bad stress case. I dropped 50 lbs too. Had I continued on living the way I had before the NASDAQ downturn, I could have been dead of a heart attack by now. So in a way, I believe losing all the money helped save my life and returned me to being more "myself" again. If I ever get that sort of riches again in my life, I'll keep it all in perspective.

21. I often keep a passport-sized copy of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution in my back pocket. I also keep a copy of a world atlas in my laptop bag.

22. Years ago I came to realize my mind spawns more creative, humanitarian and technical projects I would like to accomplish in my life than I will ever get done at the present rate. Even so, I've founded a few companies, worked with some nascent non-profits, and still gamely want to do more if given half a chance.

23. We kept a parakeet (actually a budgie) when I was growing up, named Petey. I always treated "Petey" as the budgie's name, whereas mine was "Pete" or "Peter." Even now when people call me "Petey," I want to reply with a chirp and squawk.

24. I loved the first, original three Star Wars movies. I cannot stand the recent ones.

25. Oregano is my favorite spice to add to food. I especially like it on tortellini.

What Do I Look Like?

I was asked by a person in the Philippines what I looked like presently. Here’s a photo that Franklin took of me last year during the 2008 Campus MovieFest.

Since then, my beard grew out even more. It needs a good trim!

Happy Birthday Jackson

Hey, Jackson Pollock.
Why did you break the rules
Making painters’ tarpaulins
The ideal of modern fine art?

Now it was impossible
To draw a good foot
For Mrs. Darvin
And be taken seriously.

Ah well, thanks too, you know.
For showing that the raw energy
Of creative expression
Is what people value most.

Like atomic explosions
Genetic recombination of photons
Even before Watson & Crick
Spoke the laws of biochemistry.

Somewhere in the recesses
Of my Colliers apartment
Is my own Art Students League medal
As meaningful to me as the Nobel prize.

During Odysseus’ voyage, the WPA
Gave you each day your daily bread
While each night you drank it away
Into the oblivion of Depression

Rising up on the engines of Jung
Borne aloft by an angel camouflaged
With nose art of mad dribbling paint
Guernica cried out, and then the world

That was when you threw book at the floor
“God damn it, that guy missed nothing!”
Yet life was not escaping you either
Except through methyl and methylene fumes

Probably sufficient to make first dance forgettable
But a knock on the door
Re-introduced you to romance of the sort
That only from death do-you-finally-part

Blitzkriegs shattered Europe and Asia
Yet all the while you two remained a neutral power
Until the fateful explosion of Oppenheimer
Ended the war, even on Long Island.

There in October, the Bessarabian and you
Began a resistance and revolution of your own
Three years after the wartime exhibit
Had made you and Lee Bohemian comrades-in-arts

Get rid of the labels
Get rid of the titles
Get rid of the intentions
Just look and let the image emerge

Get rid of the demons
Get rid of the bottles
Get rid of the cigarettes
That’s where we aesthetically diverge

Hey, Jackson Pollack
You had it all before you
At the age of forty-four
When you got into the Olds

Ruth’s Zowie and Metzger
Didn’t know what hit them
Neither did you
When your own painting stopped

Spattering yourself on time’s tragic canvas
Discovering incidental causality of a tree by the road
Departed at forty four by eight-eleven fifty six
Leaving shocked Lee in the proverbial lurch

Now I’m forty four and reflecting on you
Raising an ice tea in a toast of your life
Hoping there’s peace in the place where you’ve gone
Pondering abstractions of form on this Earth.

The light is remarkable outside the clear glass
Sitting amongst beauty and café conversation
A tree black and brown in the corner of view
Reminds me of organic chaos with a pattern implicit.

Horus’ eye gazes blinding eternal
From the hat off my head on my bag on the table
You broke the priest’s hieroglyphs
And paid the price of heresy.

Hey, Jackson Pollock
Thanks for the alchemical madness
That shattered expectations
And made people finally think

For themselves.

Vanity!

I decided last year to get an IMDB.com profile.

Earlier this month I wrote in eulogy for Patrick McGoohan. Though I am a free man, I am also a number. Many numbers, actually.

Henceforth, I, Peter Corless, am also to be known as http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3177242/.

I appeared in two short videos last year: Franklin Pham’s The Rehearsal (Canaan Project/Positive+Funk), and Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding (Global Understanding Institute).

The former was awarded as a finalist from San Jose State University’s Campus MovieFest 2008. The latter won second place in the 2008 Mountain View Reads contest. This year, we have more plans for more films. Documentaries. Analysis. News. Opinions. Fantasies. Fictions.

Is this shameless self-promotion? Yes. Though in a way, it is actually quite humbling. Because the IMDB resumes are not really the same things as a regular celebrity profile. I had to pay to put it up there. I had to “prime the pump” of celebrity. I also registered in IMDBpro.com to put the information on these films into IMDB.com. However, though The Reheasal was shown in a few venues (SJSU, San Francisco Sundance Kibuki Theatre), and Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding made it to community television (KMVT15 in Mountain View), neither title has made it into IMDB.com yet. Maybe one day!

It is my own way to help move forward the issues addressed in these films. If I need to put my face forward as a speaker for these movements, by process of marketing I need to become a celebrity. A spokesperson. An actor, with a cause.

Hopefully before too long, my STARmeter will rise. People may pay attention to my work, my causes, more than me. I might attract fans. Hey, I might even get paid! Yet moreso, the ideas I espouse might cause social changes in the world, producing results I would be pleased to look back upon some day in the future.

For now, my hope is to simply generate interest. To “market” the idea of Global Understanding, Positive+Funk, and the Canaan Project. And more ideas, like Flowers in the Cracks too! To put myself forward as a creative principle, and to hopefully get people to react to the “buzz” our community is beginning to create.

Vanity. Is it vain to strive towards these ideals? Franklin’s desire for social justice, peace, and sober acceptance of truth. Carlos’ desire for distributive justice and democracy. Harshi’s desire for us to get beyond sectarian hate so that love can bloom. Theresa’s desire for simple acceptance, health and happiness for us all. Michael’s desire for a sustainable economy and ecological life, even as our economy crashes down around our heads. Photographers capturing the light before it fades. Musicians and poets raising their voices even after the sun goes down. Scientists and writers, who are quite sure it is not just all in their heads.

I am awash in a sea of friends, each of whom has trials and tribulations, their triumphs and joys. People all over the world, each with their own story. Yet so many of us facing the same common crises and conflicts.

Vanity? Our struggles are not in vain. Even if no one understands what drives us — not even ourselves at times — we struggle for reasons. Purposes. There are implicit goals and desires for us. Outcomes waiting our efforts to manifest.

It would be vain to think I did not have an effect on the world. A false self-denial that should not be confused with humility. That would be a vain shattering of the mirror. Throwing a brick at it so I don’t need to look at myself. It would not change the fact that others can see me for who I am. And they are asking me to step up to the microphone of the stage of life right now. They want me to speak. They want to hear what I have to say.

Conversely, it would be vain to overstate my significance to the world. For I am only one voice of 6.7 billion in the world at this present point in history. If I raise my voice, it is only in reflection of the tremendous tapestry of events that has led us to this point in time, and which I see occurring in the world around me, leading towards our future.

Last year, with the founding of the Global Understanding Institute, and with the making of these modest movies with Franklin and others, I committed to put forth myself as an advocate. To lead. To be of service. To be a friend. As a protagonist in a screenplay of life.

All the world’s a stage and I am a player upon it. The curtain is of destiny is drawn for us all.

So, to everyone out there who feels that same impending sense of epic drama in the world, let’s learn our lines, and head onstage. It’s time. Let’s break a leg!

At this time... At this moment...

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The Inauguration Speech

Here is a document to be reflected upon.

“With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.”

— Barack H. Obama, 44th President of the United States