wildfire

This week the future has been stretching out in front of me in a peculiar way, either the inverse or the continuation of my musings about my New York shadow self, I haven't decided yet.  Now I'm starting to actually feel the decision to not go back to school not only as missing those people and that place, but also as the rest of my life opening up. The freedom that we all have to choose our lives is feeling particularly tangible, in a good and scary way.  Now I get to start thinking about how long I want to stay here, what I want to accomplish with my dancing, what I want to be in my life while I am dancing, what I want to do after.  Not that these are new questions, they're just being addressed in a different time scale now, which changes the answer some.  Most of the dancers here have been here for many many years--six and you're given an indefinite contract, meaning you need to be fired, rather than hoping each year to be rehired, and you can apply for French citizenship.  That seems very far away, and certainly things are going to change when Kader takes over, but it's also an idea I can entertain, at least.  What would it look like for me to actually live here for a while? And the other big question is of what comes after.  University, I think, almost certainly, but in what?  Do I want to do something that continues on a path related to dance, or something completely separate?  Over lunch yesterday I had a great conversation with Julian, my Norweigan yogi, and Valerio, one of the principal men who I really like, who is going to be a new father in the next few weeks :) So while Valerio was plucking away at his little travel guitar, we talked about how to deal with the entrenched power structures of society, and the tragedy of the American dream, and how all the world is trying to emulate the soulless consumerism of Hollywood. Of course, there are all sorts of wonderful things that we could be exporting, but endless work and never being satisfied with what you have... Not the mindset the world needs, not with all of what we need to accomplish. But then, how do we change that mindset?  Is living your own life in as a healthy, modest, aware, empathetic human being enough, or is setting an example not contagious enough?  The most powerful people in this world are reaping the benefits of the current system, they are not the ones who are going to change it.  So how then does the wildfire start, where do we light it, and how do we sustain the flame?