“Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind.” I hope Santa is good to you this year and that he keeps his state of mind fashion-conscious. My darlings, have a happy holiday filled with love and fabulousness.
Giorgio Armani
Brooch Tuxedo
I just came back from a run and it was…invigorating. Ever since my skiing knee-injury last winter I had to be careful not to strain or aggravate the knee so I was limited to yoga, yogalates, dance, or cycling. Running has always been such a huge part of my life that it felt unnatural to have to deprive myself of it. Today I put on two layers of track clothes and ran in the rain, through the slush (LOL, it’s so like me to choose such extreme conditions for my ‘first run’ of this year. My mom and I have this inside joke about how we always have to “overdo it”). But as strange as it may sound, the unfavourable weather only intensified the experience of feeling like “I got my mojo back.” There was hardly any discomfort in my knee at all and I immediately felt stronger. I think I finally gave my body what it was craving 
. This quote about running says it best: “Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must outrun the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning in Africa, a lion wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a lion or gazelle – when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”
Carmen in Black
I just came back from seeing Carmen – an opera at the Canadian Opera Company (COC). I have seen Carmen about 5 times in the past: a few times in St. Petersburg, a few times in Moldova, and once before in Toronto. Because of my previous experience and considering that Carmen is one of the most popular and recognizable operas of all time I sort of assumed that the COC was going to make it “the show” of this season…boy was I wrong! It not only failed to live up to my expectations but the first three acts were just painful to watch. Aside from the mediocre singing, the lead and the costume designer managed to completely shatter my perception of Carmen as a character. I always thought of her as this exotic, gypsy seductress who exudes both confidence and charm; whose beauty and strength makes her irresistible. But their Carmen was non of those things. For the first half of the performance she looked more like a bum than a coquettish temptress that she was intended to be. I’m not sure if it’s a budget issue but the COC needs to reconsider their costume approaches. Their modern takes on the period pieces is getting stale. Don’t we go to the opera partially because we want to be taken into the wonders of some other world? Quit trying to rejuvenate this art form by modernizing the costumes. Or is it realism that the COC is striving for? I hope not because the constant singing kinds of breaks the illusion anyway. Seeing Escamillo (a toreador) in a blazer and Gap pants is not going to magically make the story more relevant to today’s society. Let us have the enjoyment of the escape and please stop butchering the classics.
Silk Layers
Today I’ll be doing something I haven’t in a while. My trip to the Caribbean has been postponed so I am back in Toronto and ready for the heat…of the Russian banya. I’ll be picking up my mom as soon as I finish sharing these thoughts with you guys. I had another one of my minor revelations last night as I was laying in the tub. I know that many immigrants to Canada who come from places of warmer climates have a difficult time adjusting to this climatic change. One of my high school friends, Gabi, who moved to Canada from Brazil because her mom married a Canadian, suffered from actual chemical imbalances from lack of sun to a point where it negatively effected her general disposition. Be it a deficiency of vitamin D or the temperature drop itself, but Gabi and the winter season just didn’t get along. She moved back to Brazil right after high school.
