Wise Fox

The DTRC office is in a beautiful, heritage building downtown. I went there today to have a meeting with Andrea who's in charge of the BC chapter. The DTRC (Dancer's Transitional Resource Centre) is an organization that provides support to dance artists in the form of grants for retraining or skills updates. If a dancer pays into the DTRC for a certain amount of years, then they can apply for a grant when they are ready to retire from dance and retrain for a new career. It has other branches of support and is basically a wonderful thing for dancers.
I'm always contemplation retraining and getting a new career. Dance is a hard, hard life and, being someone who is uncomfortable with change and self direction and takes lots of comfort in stability, I find it very challenging being an independent artist.
Unfortantely, I neglected to pay into the DTRC for 4 years while I was doing an MFA in Calgary and now do not have access to grants for another 3 years. In any case, contemplating a new career brings up so many things in regards to my identity and dance.
For an instant today, I noticed a windblown, delicately curved fron of a fern lieing in a parking lot today. I saw it and the shadows it created on the pavement were like a lace curtain blowing in the breeze. It reminded me of a whymiscal song "The Wolves" sung by Bon Iver that has been the sound track of my last two days. I don't know what the song means, nothing is clear in the lyrics. What is clear is the emotion is stirs up in me and how it is a canvas in my mind for thoughts to be created upon. The fern and the song were both inviations for me to get lost in my creative mind and follow the meandering path of whymsy into some deep pool of wisdom and knowing.
When I was very young, I used to have dreams that a fox lived behind my dresser. He would appear in my dreams and stand in my room and look at me. He was calm and solid in his wisdom, yet his body was delicate and agile. His eyes were black and deep with years of learning. He terrified me.
The fox was my own wisdom and knowing looking back at me. My fear was of the unknown path that following my wisdom would take me along. He was constant in my dreams and relentless.
I know that if I transition out of dance; these aspects of self that lead me to the arts as a career will never leave my personality. The fox will still call me until I answer. This is why I am a dancer. Another career would be only that; I will never stop being an artsit. My identity will never change.