In the Spider's Web

Today I'd like to talk about networking. I'd like to talk about how networking is the number one piece of advice professors give on how to be successful for the rest of your life. I'd like to talk about how much I hate networking. I'd like to talk about how evil it is to use people.

Is there anything more to say? I'd like someone to explain to me how we all even manage to get away with networking when everyone knows what we're up to. Why don't I just start walking up to people and say, "Hi. I'm Ayodele. No, no Eye-O-Del-Ly. No, Eye-O-Del-Ly. Yes, sure you've got it. I'm only talking to you because I want to be able to use our shallow relationship to get ahead in life. Yes, this means even getting ahead of you. No, I don't love you and I think you're wearing an ugly shirt. I find your laugh pretentious, but hey, networking makes the world go 'round".

Yes, this is what I'll start to do. Instead of going out of my way to avoid awkward small talk, and no one goes to greater lengths than I to avoid awkward small talk, I will now try to find moments to network. I will throw myself into a lifestyle I've painstakingly tried to avoid for the past 24 1/2 years. I will smile that fake smile. I will laugh at jokes that aren't funny. I will remember people's names. I will say things like, "Let's get coffee!" I will catch others in my spider's web. . .and I will suck them dry.

Charlotte A. Cavatica has plenty to say about networking. I will follow her approach.

First I dive at him. Next I wrap him up. Now I knock him out, so he'll be more comfortable.... flies, bugs, grasshoppers, choice beetles, moths, butterflies, tasty cockroaches, gnats, midgets, daddy long legs, centipedes, mosquitoes, crickets - anything that is careless enough to get caught in my web.

Luckily for Charlotte, she doesn't have very discriminating tastes. She'll take everything that comes her way. She makes the most of her opportunities and connections. But wait, isn't this wicked? Let's tell the truth. I'm not so much protesting the wickedness of networking. I'm protesting that I apparently have to start doing something contrary to my nature; and the reality that this painfully prosaic way of life will not in fact make me more virtuous, but less so. WHY? Why has society been designed to bolster the personalities of Type-A Extroverts? Doesn't anyone care about all the vinegary, introverted types like myself who just want to mind their own business and only speak when they have something worth saying?

But I protest. It is wicked to network. This is not the Kingdom paradigm I am working towards. Though my evil may be in failing to show love for enough people, pretending to care about people I'd rather never speak to is not the means of atonement for my own sins.

Thus, there are two choices before me. I can either keep taking the road less traveled to avoid saying hi to that girl in my class, or I can somehow draw deep from the well of God's love and find that the girl in my class is interesting--and precious to me because she is precious to God. Later, when I need her Uncle the V.P. of SOMEWHERE IMPORTANT to write me a reference, I'll be able to make such a request while still keeping my soul.

I should still like to be sedated while I do this. Or maybe I need happy pills. If only I could network with Charlotte A. Cavatica. Because, as she says

I always give them a little anesthetic so they won't feel pain. It's a little service I throw in.

.I want much more than this provincial life.

Autumn's Waif

Update.

My life is the same. As you may have already noticed, this is a post for the post's sake. The last month has been full of back to school things, 7 new roommates, a new house, grad school plans, a new job, and of course the loveliest weather change of the year. Today I am wearing a sundress, cardigan, and tights. Because the sky is that tranquil grey-blue---the kind that makes me want to listen to jazz and drink chai green tea and cuddle and eat squash and bake pies. I love fall. What am I thinking about just now? I wish I knew. I've been feeling so overwhelmed lately, life is really full this year, and I don't like fullness. I do college by living like a desert hermit, and so having things like a house and roommates who are kindred spirits transforms all of my academic fervor into more of a feverish hallucination. Right now, I'm mostly just tired of having to study things I don't care about. I don't want to read Cicero, and think about rhetoric. I want to write a play, and bake a pie, and wear cute sweaters and crazy tights and tramp about in wellingtons and mind my own business and step on crimson leaves and be glad. Just that deep, simple merriment that comes from the comforts of the material world in the year's grey-beard time. I want to take communion from a golden chalice at an Anglican church, I want to turn into the spirit of autumn, and participate in a glorious Bacchic frenzy.

Oh, to be the spirit of an autumn wind!

I want to read poetry, and write poetry, and hear poetry, and snap my fingers. I want to waltz across my wooden floor. I want to paint with gold and red and blue! Fall is full of surprises and secrets. Perhaps because Christmas is at the end of it. Autumn, the season of promise--what a fullness of life is fall! Fall is not the decay and corruption of old age, it is the maturity, the fullness of a life well lived. It is a red rose fully bloomed, just before the petals start to wilt. And if death is what comes after, then death itself is a beautiful gift, because it's all wrapped up in a smoky, cloudy haze of awful mystery, and I love it.

Everything is richer now; truer, bolder. Not happy, but joyful. Not pretty, but beautiful. Not well brought up, but well preserved. Regal. Mature. Real.

How full is fall!