Chinese Grocery & Destiny

The Chinese grocery store by my house has the black rubber flip-flops that I wear year round for $1.49. This is a third the price they are elsewhere (i.e. Target). They also have black rice macaroni which is, as the name suggests, black. I think it'll look amazing with veggies and olive oil. There's an entire aisle of packaged instant ramen soup in a rainbow of flavors (except "Oriental" as Top Ramen, the prevalent "regular" store, brand calls it) and a whole 'nother aisle of noodles. Seaweed is also a fraction of the price you'd pay at Whole Foods -which is the only "regular" grocery store I've been able to find it in. The only thing I couldn't find was Miso paste and this was particularly surprising as there was yet a whole aisle of soup broth and other pastes including quite a few Indian curry pastes. But then I didn't look for tofu and they could have been together.... The fruit on special was Jujube which is small and sort of like a very sweet, but bland, apple in flavor and texture with a seed in the middle like an olive. It's used, dried and ground, in herbal remedies to alleviate anxiety. It is also said to make people fall in love. How interesting for those two to be used as sort of opposites. Either you can cure your anxiety so that you can fall in love or you can attract love that will cure your anxiety.
I also remembered why I haven't been in there in nearly ten years. That smell will follow you around for the rest of the day -what is that, fish?
In other news I met one of those people today that make you remember that everything happens for a reason. A character. For some reason these people are always dancers these days. That shouldn't seem the least bit odd to me, as a dancer, that I should be most enthralled with other dancers -as artists I admire, mentors. For years I was surrounded by musicians. This is not bad, either, but it's like I was just out of stride with myself by one step. People who are necessary to my art but can't really teach me much. And then there were the visual artists -even further from what I'm about but still so interesting. I feel that if there's anything I can make in the world it's a figure or a motion. I even enjoy walking and have been told I do that well, too. Anyway, I keep meeting these people lately who all happen to be amazing dancers. And as I have temporarily given up ballet, each of these people is asking me to do something outside of my vocabulary. There's something I'm really loving about being told to do all of these things that would have been really weird in ballet.
Back to the original point. I feel almost daily that I'm not in the right world. There are a million ways to do anything including live a life and I'm still trying to figure out how to live mine better. In harmony with what I need and love. The parts of it that I'm finding particularly challenging are figuring out the little bits that others are doing differently and with success. And every time I come across one of these people who's lives I see a bit of (and then fill in the gaping holes in my head with lovely, happy playdough) I think: this is what I'm supposed to be doing. Dancing in unusual ways and spending a month in Brazil and wearing a haircut no one would take seriously in a bank. Supposedly I work in the arts, too, but it certainly isn't the same.
So when i come across someone I feel bizarrely attracted to (where there's something about it you feel in your bones) lately, I think: this is an opportunity to learn how to live. And it seems so far away now that I tell myself: maybe not until your next life will you live as a mostly unemployed dancer, happily and with grace, but you've got to stick around now and soak it up and make life bearable until then.