On Networking and Being an Airhead

 “On Networking and Being an Airhead”

by Allison Louise Miller

Is this what networking means?

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Sometimes I think of people as angelic sleeper agents, like a "good version" of Agent Smith from The Matrix. You're walking around on a crowded Portland street, people have earbuds and antennae coming out of their heads, they’re staring at screens, and then, suddenly, someone is possessed by a rare enthusiasm–an outburst of JOY, an invitation to CONNECT. When you happen to witness and sometimes share these outbursts, the spirit that overcomes you in such a moment is just that–momentary. Ephemeral. If you don't ride that wave of enthusiasm, you lose it. So I’ve been trying to get better at spotting those moments and riding that wave of shared spirit. I think that’s probably what people mean when they talk about networking.

You have to scan the crowd. Keep your ears open and tune into the radio all the time, like when Jan Brady got braces.

Take my neighbor who played ukulele at all hours. He offered to teach me, but I’ve missed that opportunity because now he doesn’t play anymore. It’s as if God wanted me to learn ukulele and presented this offer in the form of his angel taking human form on Earth, and I blew it!

You know the story of the Christian who died on a desert island because he kept praying to God for rescue, but then he refused every form of rescue God sent his way? That’s how ridiculous it can be when you go through life with a closed heart and always say “no” to invitations.

It was as if my neighbor had been momentarily possessed by Dr. Samuel Beckett from Quantum Leap, who plays instruments and loves teaching people. But, now, that traveling angel has moved on to possess someone else. Maybe he’s visiting New York City for the first time like Crocodile Dundee. Maybe he’s meeting Abbott and Costello. But, for certain, he ain’t teaching me ukulele.

Sometimes, when I meet someone, I speed run through possible angelic sleeper agent powers. Do you like building things out of cardboard or PVC pipe? Want to make buttons? Do you play and teach music? Do you cook? It’s an exhausting checklist that I make up on the fly and rush through because I know that the spirit will be departing soon and I want to catch it. I literally want to catch fairies in the park and put them in lanterns.

I decorate my apartment like a sardine tin diorama to create an enticing lure for them. A trap for fairies. Step inside my lair and partake in the snacks of the Fairy Queen (not really, just me, a y2k space goblin), and you will be lost to time forever and forgotten. You will spend your days watching weird Japanese drag king musicals and playing board games, eating gourmet snacks from ethnic markets, while in the real world you run widdershins until you pass out and the police call in another overdose.

The key is to keep my eye on the shore and watch for that big wave. The 50 Year Storm. The Zeitgeist. Such waves can be seasonal, tied to the Santa Ana winds or the Schumann Resonance, the phases of the moon, the alignment of the planets, the fluctuating size of the wormhole at the bottom of Crater Lake, which hosts unidentified submersible objects just like its sister lake in Baikal, Russia. You can sense it in the fidgeting of the juice zombies. Summertime hits in Old Town and suddenly everyone you pass on the street mutters:

“Got any juice?"

"You need some juice?"

"You got juice?"

"I got juice.”

Whatever you do, don’t try the juice in Old Town. It's made by aliens drinking Elerium-115 and collecting their piss in jars. It will make you crazy and kill you.

I have a somewhat loose relationship with facts, like how Unicole says Xe has a psychedelic relationship with reality. I enjoy very left hand, head in the clouds, thinking . . . I'm an air head . . . and it irritates some people. The thing is, I can never pinpoint precisely what irritates them about it, and I could never come up with a way to explain it to people that doesn't make me sound like an idiot.

Some people have a rigorous academic regard for facts and citations. It's just the way they think. It can be a great thing, or it can be annoying if they're snooty. They think and communicate like an academic.

I think and communicate like a speculative fiction writer.

If an academic says something that's not 100% true, people cry foul.

If a speculative fiction writer says something pseudoscientific--but apropos metaphorically--you take that for what it is and either appreciate it or don't, but you don't judge it by the same standard as academic writing.

As an example, take my hateful sister (not the nice fascist one). She is a very rigid, closedminded, person, and she would call everything I say here "word salad" or try to gaslight me. She also thought our mother had dementia.

People like my sister are judgmental and willfully ignorant. My mom didn't have dementia and wasn't stupid. She was just an absolute airhead like me. She spoke in poetry.

The truth is, people like my sister (and father when he was alive) simply are not as intelligent as they think they are. They don't understand anything, only their own snap judgements and simplified worldview, which is provincial and small-minded.

I sometimes think that, if everyone knew I was a sci-fi author who'd written several books, they'd be a lot more patient with me. But, then I wonder, did anyone in his daily life know Philip K Dick was a science fiction author? I think most people probably knew him as the crazy old man (though under 54 still) who supplied them with drugs.

It doesn’t help that I look like Bishoujo Darkman right now with the hideous burns and bandages over my disfigured face, or that I grin like a wide-eyed lunatic and laugh to myself for no reason, or that I won’t stop talking about Twilight. Shop clerks stop smiling and deadeye me, where they had just been friendly with someone a moment before. Black guys cross the sidewalk at night to avoid me and drag queens give me money to make me go away.

Genius therapeutic advice from ChatGPT:

It might help to simply name this when you're around more rigid thinkers. Something like, “I tend to think in metaphors and gut-feelings—sometimes what I say is more intuitive than factual, but it’s a way of making sense of things, not dodging truth.” That gives people a framework, and often reduces the friction.