May all your Christmases be white

How cruel it is that someone like me should be living in Sunny California. Before I start sounding more and more like an ungrateful wretch, let me make clear that I think there is nothing intrinsically wrong with SoCal. More or less, there's something mentally wrong with me (as my mom suggested the other day) for preferring cold and ice over sun and warmth.

It's just that for the longest time, winter brought along so much more than just a tiny drop in the thermometer and some lukewarm holiday wishes. While living on the east coast, I looked forward to December every year because I loved how the cold intensified every aspect of Christmas. The holiday, as I knew it, absolutely had to have me shivering senseless so that I could run faster inside to a warm room with friends and hot chocolate. December here has me donning a light coat at the most, and I can't even put to use the beautiful white scarf my friend knitted for me.

So while I'm sitting here in dreadful ennui for the next two weeks, I'm searching through everything to bring back tidbits of what winter felt like.

Just like what Ella Fitzgerald has been singing in my head for the past week or so, may all your Christmases be white. For me, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, and that's as far as it will ever go this time around.

Ballet(omane)

My fifteen minutes with ballet happened in first and second grade. At that time, I went to a special elementary school in Shanghai that had an intense integrated dance program. My parents really wanted me to go there because they thought the physical exercises would strengthen my immune system and ward off my pneumonia.

Their plan did not turn out well. I kept on getting pneumonia annually until about age 10. Also, the instructors there told me I was too fat to keep on dancing (they wanted stick-skinny girls who will eventually be career dancers). My mother became really angry because she was making large donations to the dance program and they didn't even treat me like they wanted me to do well. She dropped me from the program at the end of second grade, and there goes my only experience (so far) with ballet.

In retrospect, I should've just told the instructors to f-off. I mean, sure, I was never cut out to be the next Anna Pavlova, but was it really necessary for you to call a seven-year-old fat? Besides, who says someone like me couldn't have kept on dancing? If they had any heart at all, they would have suggested me to continue at another, perhaps less intensive, ballet studio. Maybe by now, I would've been en pointe for several years already.

All that's irrelevant, though. What matters to me now is that my love for ballet has resurfaced. Recently, I have been looking up and reading about everything I can on this topic. I'm learning about ballet companies, dancers, choreographers, complete pieces... I even went to see the American Ballet Company perform at the OCPAC. It was Giselle, with Julie Kent and Jose Manuel Carreno in the leading roles.

It was a touching performance. By the end of the second act, I was sobbing silently in my seat and desperately trying to wipe away my tears as Prince Albert hopelessly left Giselle's grave at the break of dawn. I felt so stupid for crying, since no one around me showed a single drop of emotion, but the tragedy of it all really did shake me. Call me emotional, call me easily affected, it doesn't matter. From then on, ballet became something beautiful to me.

Recently, I've been seriously contemplating the idea of taking ballet lessons. Of course, it'll be the most beginner courses available and I might never get to go en pointe, but it'd be more than what I ever had. For now, I'm only a balletomane, a lover of ballet who ultimately cannot understand the art form on a deeper level. I want not only the capacity to enjoy Svetlana Zakahrova's performance of Swan Lake, but also the understanding of just exactly how difficult every move is and how practically nobody gets to that level of virtuosity. I want more, and there's no reason why it shouldn't work out this time around.

Intro

I keep my own private Xanga, but that's really for the kind of ranting that I'm sure no one cares for. I guess I'd like to also have a place where I could put on public view some of the things I like and the thoughts I have. I've no idea how successful this will be, since I usually get so sick of fashion blogs and their overall pretentiousness (including many of my own failed attempts). Hopefully this will be different, but then who knows.

I plan to inject my own brand of sentimentality into the posts because I feel like my super-sensitivity and attachment to everything I see is kind of comical (sometimes; other times it's just sad).

Anyways.