Update on Justice Divine

Blog!

Justice Divine now has a blog, which is just a quick placeholder I set up for her. She's also been making progress on her book. Today we had a conversational lesson of how a "flower" may grow and thrive even in the hard stone of business reality.

Computer Needs a Modem & Appeal for Donations

We can use help by getting a donated external 56K modem for an old Macintosh so she could get access to the Internet. (It is presently running OS 9, but with an ancient 14.4K internal modem. Do any ISPs even support 14.4K dial-up any more?) If you'd like to donate other new or old computer equipment, Justice could use her own system (rather than borrowing the old computer from me). We also have another author that could use his own system. Contact me if you have a bona fide offer to donate (not sell) working old computer systems. We're not a non-profit corporation, such as a 501(c)3, nor are we a charity. Yet your generosity would certainly be appreciated by the burgeoning creative principals we have in our project.

Publishing 101

Justice and I spoke today about the microeconomics of printing and publishing and selling books. We spoke about Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) and what an International Standard Book Number (ISBN) means. The former is a requirement to calculate if you ever want to know your product's per-unit expenses. We definitely want to keep track of COGS, though, to make sure we're successful—thus ensuring we can do this again and again! The latter is a requirement if you ever want to sell the book through the channel of booksellers nationwide. We might do her first book as a limited edition, sold direct, which would mean that the latter is not a requirement for now.

With a call I got a price quote for a limited quantity of a short print run of books. From that, we spoke about price-per-unit and what we'd need to reasonably set as the product price to make back our costs. We also spoke about how the price might be similar or different for an e-download copy of the same product.

It was a good, up-front conversation early in the process. Many authors and artists only get educated regarding the economics and business aspects of creativity late in the process and are surprised in the final analysis of how money is involved in the final production of their work. So today we took a bit of time to speak about what it would take to e-publish, and how much it would take to small-print-run publish her work.

We also spoke about contracts, and retaining intellectual property rights (such as copyright) versus assigning rights as part of "Work-for-Hire." We are both agreed Justice will retain copyright and ownership of her own works in whatever relationship we move forward with. We'll work more on a revenue split model when we go forward than for me to "buy her out" as a publisher and own all her rights.

Justice is not a "softie" when it comes to protecting her work! She's quite eager to do a professional job and quite understanding of what it's going to take to be successful. She also is interested in making sure her work is properly valued.

While we are in close agreement on some ideas for initial packaging, publishing and pricing for a web-book sold over the Internet or small limited print run sold locally in the Bay Area, we have not made any formal decisions. Certainly we'd have to think quite a bit before we approach doing a full-scale print run or approached another publisher. It quite a dose of reality to deal with when you consider large-scale costs, inventory and channel management. We're still a way off from that conversation.

For today, there's a small new blossom: her very own first blog, which, admittedly, I set up on her behalf. Hopefully in the days ahead you'll be hearing more about her stories and her work process.

-Peter Corless.
petercorless | @ | mac.com
650-964-4276 (home office)

No Pity

Jean Grewe is another hero of mine today!

Congratulations to Ilona!

Ilona Leiberman just had a wondrous bouquet of success! Huzzah!

Here's her flowers in the cracks for the week: her photograph of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman just got printed in Time magazine (27 Feb 2006 issue; here's a link to the online article sans photograph.).

She's taken a good number of photos of the actor who starred in Capote, which you can find on MSN (including the one labelled "In Focus.") You can also see more Philip Seymour Hoffman at Ilona's own web site, IlonaLieberman.com.

Ilona's photo was used in an article on the Oscar®-nominated stars this year, and as we know, he was nominated for an Oscar for Actor in a Leading Role. My own favorite appearance of him was in the movie Almost Famous. A close second was in Cold Mountain.

I have to admit I did not see him in Capote. I have seen him in Next Stop Wonderland (a wonderful and modest film), Twister (where I was convinced he must have once attended a computer or networking or roleplaying convention based on his geekiness), Boogie Nights (which reminded me why the 1970s seemed so sad and depressing, even as a kid), and Scent of a Woman (where sadly, I cannot recall exactly what he did for the movie! I am sure true fans can remind me of the scenes he was in, or maybe I'll rent it again). He often seems to play sloppy or sleazy characters. Maybe Capote will be a watershed movie for him, opening up new types of roles, especially leading roles.

For now, this is great exposure for Ilona's work. She'll be focusing for now on her Time in the sun, as it were. Go Ilona, go!

Liz Perle — Good to See Her Smile

Liz Perle, authoress of Money: A Memoir, was recently quoted in Oprah's February 2006 issue as saying, "My divorce left me homeless with a 4-year old in tow—I needed to figure out how I ended up there."

She confessed that she had married a man who liked to control the money. I must confess, I love to earn the money, but I am terrible at controlling it. I just always (so far) had more than what I owed, so I am living a rather debt-free existence. However, I am a terrible "money manager," in terms of microeconomics. I suppose there are some men and some women who love to balance the checkbook. I suppose I just like to earn X and spend Y, where Y is less than X by some nice Z value.

Liz Perle was guardedly smiling in her photo in "O" magazine. Her face was turned slightly to the side. She admitted later in the brief interview "Just the other day I bought a $350 coat. And when I showed it to my husband, I told him it cost $300. It was completely involuntary, and I just laughed."

First of all, congratulations Liz! Inferentially you weathered the homelessness and are now remarried. Huzzah! That's great! It should give some comfort to other women in such a predicament that there's hope for great things to come. Remarriage. Celebrating the flowers blooming again after seeing so much of the hard pavement.

When people ask me "What is Flowers in the Cracks?" it reminds me of the basic questions of aesthetics. What is beauty? And from that, what is art? Does art need to be beautiful?

Flowers in the cracks celebrates the renewal of organic growth, yet also recognizes the organic structures of the inorganic. Rocks crack in organic shapes from pressures of water and wind and temperature change from sunlight and snow. Flowers spring up through them.

Each of us is a Flower in the Crack. Today, I celebrate Liz Perle's flower blooming in the crack. Even if she seems set enough now to bloom in Bloomingdales! We should all be so lucky, yes?

Liz lives just north of here in San Francisco, California, according to her biography. She is working for the non-profit Common Sense Media where you are allowed to make family-friendly reviews for parents, and where you can read parenting tips. She is married and living with her two children. So things definitely have improved since she was homeless with one four-year-old child.

Liz' bio photo on her site still has a sideways glance to it. A bit of a coyness. Still the "Can you believe it?" implicit question. A wryness in the tilt of her head. It's softer than her crisp, wintery air photo in "O," and I am glad to see it. It is more relaxed. I like all the books behind her.

However Liz Perle manages to find her smile, that's great. That's the flower in the crack. The upward curl of her lips. For the other Liz Perles of life, I hope you find your own way to navigate through life and find that smile at the end of the day.

Let me introduce myself...

Hello, my name is Ilona Lieberman, I am a photographer based in New York City. My interest in photography is the depiction of the human spirit and to capture moments in time honestly and poignantly. Recently, I have been exploring themes of decay and rebirth on the urban landscape in New York City. My aim, as a creative principal in Flowers In The Cracks, is to develop a visual style that will allow me to incorporate both my personal interest in beauty as well as the address themes of joy and renewal that are the core of this project.

Peter Corless and I have known each other for almost three decades. As our lives have crossed paths once again, I have come to both appreciate and respect Peter as an artist, philosopher and overall decent human being. I look forward to the continued growth of our project, Flowers In The Cracks, as well as working with you all in this artistic collaboration.

A Poem About My Death

Here's today's creative contribution. Actually, it was from a few weeks ago. I just got to post it the other day on my own blog, and link to it from here:

Flowers in the Cracks, or My Death at the Feet of the Muses

The poem, though ostensibly about death, is truly about the death of ego, and the rebirth of the better self. I guess they'd call that superego. Yes, my psyche is capable of super powers! Yours is too.

Enjoy the day.

-Pete.

More Possible Contributors

In the past weeks, I have begun relationships with a few other community and creative principles: Shanee Mimmitt of San Francisco, Justice Divine of Oakland, Tatiana Emma Scutelnic of Palo Alto and Jana Krezo of San Francisco, both photographers, and Toby Matthews, a poet in San Jose. There is also the sustaining and growing relationship between Ilona and myself.

Earthquakes, Great and Small

The cracks in the rocks snap, crackle and pop as the flowers spring up. The rock slowly gives way. Every once in a while there's an earthquake as the earth itself settles into a new equilibrium. I came out to California during the wake of the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989. We have them every once in a while. The buildings sway like an elevated subway station in New York when the train settles in with a lurch, or as a suspension bridge bobs up and down or sways side-to-side when you walk across it while the traffic races by.

Most people in a car, truck or in the train would not feel the yielding of the world, but such phenomena are quite observable if you are astute and aware of your surroundings, your feet firmly planted on the ground.

Some earthquakes are great in magnitude and terrible in toll, like the Indian Ocean Tsunami. Yet even a flower can cause the ground to quake, just a little. Just enough for life to spring up. You can actually watch time-elapse photos and see how a tendril leaves a plant bulb and quivers, leaving the earth rent in a minute way, searching for a path to the sunshine. Earthworms also aerate the soil, leaving their own organic fault lines and fractures in the dirt. Katie, a young girl I met at St. Timothy's this weekend, reminded me you need sun, water, earth and earthworms to make flowers. She showed me her drawing, and it was quite apparent she was right. I had forgotten about the earthworms until she reminded me. Of course! Earthworms. Stirring and creating tension in the dirt. Something has to break up the rocks so that there are cracks in which the flowers take root. Too much compression of the earth and you get lifeless, though maleable, clay. Dirt needs to be whipped like a frothy loam. Rocks need to be broken to make cracks for the flowers. If you measured the tension of soil with a tensiometer, you could even predict when it was appropriate to water the earth. Tiny floods and earthquakes.

Creative Principles in a Loose Confederation

All the creative principles I mentioned above are at various places of success and progress in their personal lives. The only commonality is that I have encountered them all at least once since the turn of this year. Not all face-to-face either.

They all want to create something, or are already creating in their own lives, and are looking to take their works to the next higher levels of success.

Toby is going to send me a poem of his for review. Shanee is working on her biography. Ilona is thinking about how to frame her thoughts, and very deeply about her contributions, being on the opposite coast in New York. Jana wants to hear more about the project. Tatiana and I have only just broached the topic.

There is no firm commitment from any of them. No formal contracts. Just thoughts. Ideas. Hopes. Vague feelings. We are in the stage of the project where seeds are being planted. This is more of an organic project than a business plan. There may be a business plan to follow. For now, it's too soon to try to put a container on the growth. Let's see what evolves.

The Phoenix of Evolution

The image of the Flower in the Cracks is the poetic trope around which we are milling over. A sort of garden of ideas. We are now in February. In California, that means we see cherry trees in full petal. Flowers in bloom. How unlike New York, or other places around the world which are still in deep winter!

Today I am just finishing my first course for my graduate degree, an Online MBA in Technology Management, which I am getting at the University of Phoenix. It is a day to celebrate the closure of the first class, and the birth of the next class, which begins tomorrow. Like the ashes rising from the death of the old Phoenix, for the birth of the new.

The Phoenix is the symbol of rebirth and renewal. It is the symbol of the Rememberer's Society in the fictional world of Castle Marrach, where I, in my fictional identity as Gareth Beaumains, headed the Rememberer's Society for a few real-world years. "To rise, and fall, to rise again." The image of the Phoenix.

It is related to the spirit of the ever-renewing Grail of medieval legend. To rennaisance and rebirth. Both spiritual and worldly.

Flowers in the Cracks is similarly a celebration of the ever-renewing spirit of life. The triumph of continued existence and flourishing.

Each person mentioned on this page is contributing to the theme of this project, even if their consciousness is not aware of this blog's existence, nor aware of the specific contents of each post. Each moment of their continued existence is part of the ever-renewing theme of Flowers in the Cracks, even if it is not a consciously-contributed effort. The same with you, and your life.

Each of us is a flower struggling against our own limited cracks in reality. Where we find purchase in our lives, either that feels as comfortable as soft loamy earth, or as brutal as wind-swept hard bedrock.

Each is a contributor of their existence to the world. Each of them therefore is a potential contributor to Flowers in the Cracks. Each has stories to tell you. Stories they told me, or have yet to tell me, but I can already percieve they have such stories to tell!

Ilona is asking me to make the project more concrete for her. What is it precisely? What is not part of this project is more to the point.

This project is not my entire life right now. Nor does it comprise the entirety of the creations of everyone who has a casual conversation with my about photopgraphy, writing, or existence in the universe.

Flowers in the Cracks, to me, is an artisitic collaboration project, or more properly, a movement, focused on the dynamic of the organic and inorganic, the continuous renewal of life and beauty, our quest for truth and love in our lives, the interplay within our own spirit and soul, and the triumph of joy and contentment upon maturation.

Flowers in the Cracks is yet a seedling of a movement.

The Wasteland

The memetic germ of this idea came to me when I felt that Silicon Valley was rapidly heading towards the Wasteland in the late 1990s. I knew that there was going to be a terrible retrenchment in the industry, and I would be powerless to stop it. The Dolorous Blow, for me, was my own lay-off in May 2001. The Dolorous Blow for the nation was struck on 9/11. Or at least, that was the most apparent strike of the blow.

Yet the rot in the state had begun before then. We would not have needed to have suffered a 9/11-scale tragedy if there were people in the world who were not bent on causing us harm. Where had the fury, the anger, the bitterness, the cancer, the poison, crept in? What had we been doing as a nation to have brought upon ourselves such an attack?

What had we been doing to have brought about the domestic wasteland where the rich were getting so very rich at the expense of so many very poor? What had we wrought around the world that caused such violent hatred to be directed towards our nation? Weren't we the same nation that had led the foundation of the United Nations for world peace? Had we not led humanity to landing on the moon and in the International Space Station? Had we not navigated through the Cold War without an exchange of nuclear destruction amongst the leading industrial nations of the world?

Somewhere we had fallen on the cold stone of bitterness. Somehow all our work was thrown back in our faces, and the icon of world trade, the World Trade Center, was demolished.

Yet rather than focus on that disaster, this project shall be like a photographic negative of that terribly negative event. In other words, a positive. And not just one positive, but many positives.

Finding The Grail

Since my lay-off in 2001, I have sought a way to be reborn as a creative principle. I have sought little online game community plans and I have postulated trillion-dollar ideas, some of which have been patented. Aside from all of this, yet connected to it all, is the Flowers in the Cracks. A small garden of thought. A movement for creativity and renewal. Something done for my generous spirit, my yearning soul and my vitality as a creative principle.

The Grail we seek is usually always beside us or within us. Something we overlook. It ever reminds us of what we could be doing if we were not beating ourselves up about not doing it. This is my garden of peace in the War of Art. A willing surrender to my creative process.

For me, elsewhere in my life I am picking up again on some of the technology work I put aside since leaving Cisco Systems, Inc., in 2001, and some of the creative work I have put down since graduating from Carnegie Mellon in 1986. In this year, 2006, and onwards for the next years of my life, there is a new synthesis I am hoping to find. A closer harmony with what the world wishes me to be doing. A right livelihood. A fortune of joy.

I am glad that these other contributors are considering working with me, whether as part of Flowers in the Cracks, or in some other possible collaboration. I can hardly wait to see what happens in coming days. Yet I know that flowers take time to grow. It's still early in the season. The sun and moon will shine many times before some of these flowers are ready to bloom.

For now, I am content. The Holy Grail is achieved in a way already. Soul-searching for now is done. Next begins the time of caretaking and celebrating. Hopefully that will last me for the rest of my life.

If you are interested in collaborating or contributing to Flowers in the Cracks, feel free to email me at petercorless{at}mac.com, or post your reply below.