Query: How does the practice of contact improvisation influence one's values as evidenced by shifts in one's daily habits?

Born and bred in Boston, I relish jay-walking in which, by careful and quick calculations, car and pedestrian cross midstream, neither altering pace. But I begin to notice that I am cutting a little too close to the speeding vehicles, almost brushing them with my hand as they careen past the tips of my feet.

In crowds, I find that I touch anonymous people as I slide by them, my hands lightly on the crest of their hips. When I am about to be stepped back into, I put out a soft hand for them to land in, both to let them know that I am there and to provide them a platform from which to smoothly redirect their path. I enjoy jostling brusquely through, as well.

I notice that I look at people unabashedly as landscape and have to fight the impulse to graze my way into their conversations. I might discover that I have pulled up to their cafe table and tossed in a comment or two, perhaps sipping from their tea. I want to touch their hair and to feel the textures of their clothing. Likewise, I float out of conversations midstream as the current of my interest draws me elsewhere.

I source off children and animals, echoing their rhythms, gestures, and sounds, returning their apparent gibberish with gibberish and joining along in their purposeful meanderings. Will this child fail to learn if I do not prompt, "What's this? What's this?" and "What did you do today?" and "What sound does a doggy make?" I fear that if I only mirror rather than prod with this call and response, the child might end up stunted, never learning speech and proper etiquette. Yet I want to enroll in their expeditions.

I notice that I watch things fall without flinching—cups, books, children—without fumbling wildly to save them, ambition again replaced by curiosity, will by physics. I myself fall easily and readily. At the slightest invitation, I succumb to the ground. If I were to fall off a ladder, I would spiral to the ground largely unharmed, just as I have always imagined that I could survive a plummeting elevator by jumping the instant before it smashes into bits on the basement casement. I would not neglect the last six inches. When it really matters, some primitive, physical impulse I have rehoned through CI will save my day.

In my mother's kitchen, I hold my nose to the plush aroma of a summer peach, so delightfully fragrant and fuzzy. I am ordered to put it down. I offend the cook when I bend my neck to the plate to take in the smells of dinner and am told that I am an animal. I guess I am an animal. I do not understand how people can wear shoes, sit in chairs, use forks. I am a communal animal body, a visceral being. I need jostling and handling. I need to be squeezed and pressed directly. I am, in fact, a compression junkie. My bones, muscles, and skin are Slinkies stretching, unwinding, and springing.

Oversensitization is also noticed. I feel my food descend through my colon. Perfumed odors like candles and incense overwhelm me. I cannot bear the crude aggression of amplified sounds, television screens in clothing stores, restaurants, and even the post office. The sharp chirps of car keys and the synthetic voices of ATM machines make me wince. But I do love the choreography of subway seats being vacated and inhabited, and the way that a bicycle, a car, and two people walking in opposite directions inevitably align in otherwise empty streets.

So, I wonder, what kind of training is this? Just as being barefoot is apparently political, is CI a liberation practice intent on retrofitting civilization? How much of this is culture bound as well? How much is just an excuse to do what I want by finding a system that approves enough of it? Of what society am I still fit to be a citizen?