Duality

Thanks to  Kerry, the word duality is now in my pseudo intellectual business lingo.

Duality: being twofold; a classification into two opposed parts or subclasses.

My days at an internet startup consists of apologizing to clients for our woefully inadequate product, cajoling uninspired developers and DBAs to get something, anything done.  It's hard to do when I'm uninspired myself.  We all work too hard for too little.  We all expend too much energy towards stress when really, poor planning, lack of planning and communication forces us to a breaking point where nothing matters and the our goal each day is to leave with some dignity left in our situation.  Well, at least when I have my own business, I'll know how to behave differently.

Inspiring people to your ideas is a difficult thing.  It's not so hard to organize people by their own beliefs – but to lead them to your own values and goals is nearly impossible.

Thursday night I did this. I love my neighborhood. Imagine a game of tag, but over 9x5 blocks area, with a bunch of random strangers.  Claudia and I left early cause, well, she was tired from running and I was tired from being caught.  Thanks to the Arabic dude behind the counter, we went our way down busy Bedford Ave on a gorgeous summer night with a couple of beers (poured in coffee cups) in our hands.  Claudia got some vegetarian tuna (which did not look anything like tuna) and I got some flatbread and we made a great tuna melt at home.   Had a smoke while we watched Barbarella – I got dizzy when it turned psychedelic so I turned in.

Friday night I went to Brooklyn Festival at the bandshell in Prospect Park with Jun and a couple of friends.  Met up with Pauline; she shared her photos of her trip to Sri Lanka and Asia to the  wicked scatterbug sounds of Charlie Hunter and his 8 string guitar.  The man is amazing.  Bass, melody, rhythm, counterpoint and contra-movement.. everything came from his five fingers scrambling over the frets – like ants crawling over a picnic (if they were on speed).  My favorite part of the night was when Jun and I compared our favorite clouds passing by above us, as the Big Dipper peeked out from the van Gogh night. 

Afterwards, we went to see Kerry at a bar nearby...

"So a pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel attached to his crotch.
Bartender: Hey, whadda ya have there?
Pirate: Give me a lil' bit o' the strong stuff, won'tcha please.
Bartender: Sure thing, but why do you have that steering wheel attached to your crotch?
Pirate: I dunno sonny, but I do know that it's drivin' me nuts!"

Ba-da-bing. Thank you thank you.