I often think: I am not a skilled networker. Almost always, in that truest most honest place right in the middle of me, I want to leave the party early. I go to events where people speak about things that keenly interest me, gaze at them longingly, sometimes drink a glass of free complementary Chardonnay, and then leave. At the same time, I yearn for conversation and exchange, for offering all of what we have to offer one another. It’s one of the primary ongoing quarrels I have with myself. So when I think of a city of networkers, it’s all vernissages and finissages and I roll my eyes in self-defence.
Then again I know that’s an impoverished understanding of it, of the knotting and weaving, the craft practiced by caterpillars and grandmothers and little spiders who alchemise thread from their own bodies to catch dewdrops and mosquitoes. Networking is what the rusty-red dog in Erasmuspark does when she jumps after the ball a meter and a half in the air and then runs and lays it at the feet of whoever walks there across the field. Lays it at my feet. And I pick it up and throw it and the rusty-red dog runs and jumps and lays it at another walker’s feet. And through that spit and joy, we draw closer. And that (note to self) is how you do it. So don’t try to do without it.
The other day in the park I wrote (after listening to Carlo Rovelli’s ‘The Order of Time’ during breakfast): I won’t be rushed, I won’t be rushed. Head against tree, don’t rush me. My feet age faster than my crown, infinitesimally. The roots age faster than the branches but grow slower, if I understand the physicist correctly. To reach out takes a certain grandiosity I only possess half of the time. But at least I possess it. Pigeons pick at pistachio shells. In 15 minutes I have to get up and go to work. Roots grow even in your sleep. The networkers follow incalculable intuition in their weaving. Their weaving supports our weaving.
It’s an altogether sticky sort of situation. In a city of networkers, you get caught constantly, in the good ways (you were falling) and the bad ways (you were running).
A little while after I read the article about bird strikes and air rights last year, I also wrote the following poem. It’s about more-than-human networking and I want the reader to feel trapped and tossed around and comforted and let down (when there’s a tear in the net). You’re a fly you’re a fish you’re a rabbit. I’m the rusty-red dog in Erasmuspark who excitedly drops a ball at your feet. Are you going to throw it, or what?!
If care is a web
If care is a web, whose are the many nimble limbs weaving world wide fractals like sleepwalkers they move precisely and we may find ourselves inside a sticky cocoon but we best stay still that will make it more comfortable to live is to get caught and
if care is a net, who is the fisherwoman tying its rows of knots humming as her fingers move precisely and when we come up gasping for air all huddled and desperate there she is her big round naked face for a moment all curious and kind before she throws us back in she only wanted to have a look hence all the many days of knotting but
these are religious questions they don’t matter except for the scales, our scales shifty slippery they glisten with wetness they fit together precisely, well in practice but in theory they itch, explode and there her round face and there we live on a planet and a whole third of it is land how are we meant to go on just go on to live is to get caught again in a web in a net or
from a free fall by talons if care is a nest returning to it the falcon grants us bird-eyes feathers are a lot like scales but you can use them to write — why would you though says the falcon, you can use them to —
fly, he probably meant to add but got caught in a jet engine and dropped us, goodbye mr. blue sky.
Perhaps networking is better conceived less as binding new connections and more as mending ones torn apart by a violently compartmental system 🤖