Merry Christmas!

May your holiday be warm and bright, with plenty of good cheer all around.

Much care,
Kiki

Corporeal Meltdown

After making it through the last few events that required charm and poise this calendar year, my body finally gave out. It happened right about the time I realized that over the past three weeks, my travel schedule has averaged out into one flight every 2.4 days. All of a sudden, the adrenaline just plummeted and I realized that I was losing my voice, that my throat and even my lungs hurt, and sheer exhaustion just kicked in. By class time today, it had gotten to the point where I could barely squeak out my name, and just had to cancel all verbal teaching for the rest of the week. Electronic office hours are in full swing, however - there is really no rest for the wicked.

Colin Firth is involved over here. And you know that when Colin Firth is as necessary to a girl as cough drops and extra sleep, she is seriously ill. But when in doubt, Colin Firth is the panacea for anytime a girl needs a little extra comfort.

Sexy Beijing

My newly-single self has taken to watching the late-night reruns of Sex and the City for kicks after a long day of reading and writing. But as much as I love New York, I will admit to missing Beijing, despite the pollution, traffic and general lunacy of the place. What better then, than Sexy Beijing? This show is a spoof on Sex and the City based on one young, white woman's interviews with Beijingers about love lives - theirs, and her own. Definitely check it out, not only for the fun of it, but also for a virtual cruise through Beijing in the summertime, and for the view of a culture from the inside. This is not what you read about China in the papers, and definitely the Beijing I know and love! Hutong culture, I miss you so!

Her advice at the very end of the episode is very appropriate, given all that has happened lately.

Martini Diet

There is something to be said for retail therapy in times of relationship crisis. It's a way of articulating possibility and a bright new future. The last time I had one, I went out and bought a fabulous pair of pointy-toed kitten-heel slouchy boots. This time, I bought girly books - and you can get a lot of girly books on Amazon for the same price as a pair of boots.

The Martini Diet: The Self-Indulgent Way to a Thinner, More Fabulous You! by Jennifer "Gin" Sander was not bought as a diet book - quite the contrary. I'm all about self-indulgence and anything that comes in a glass with a stem, and it just looked like a fun little thing without footnotes or foreign languages. And it has a couple really simple rules, which essentially fall into the trend of French thinking that is sweeping like wildfire through girly books these days:

1. Eat only the very best.
2. Eat somewhat less of the very best.
3. Eat the very best only at mealtimes.

Exercise is absolutely necessary in her scheme, as is dressing well (without spending like crazy, just being a little indulgent and very creative). And there is one really nifty trick - use the approximate size of a martini glass (about 3 oz.) as your portion measurement tool. But otherwise, you can have all the triple-creme, top-shelf, dry-aged naughty deliciousness you want - just in modest portions, and savored slowly during meals only. Even having a coffee mid-day - you should stop and drink it in a real cup in the cafe, not just grab it to go and slurp it down the street. Elegance, refinement, and food-snobbery (emphatically not people-snobbery!) are the way to change the mindset, and change the body. And when she named the original Martini School Diva as Julia Child - I knew this was absolutely the way to go. Julia Child is amazing, one of the women I admire most in the world. If you haven't read My Life in France, surf straight on over to Amazon and pick it up.

This mentality fits right in with my "fabulous rule" - unless it's fabulous, it's not worth doing. But as much as I try to stick to that rule, my issue is stress-induced and emotional eating . Especially lately, when it's all too easy to walk in at the end of the day, exhausted, crazed and blind with hunger, and going straight for the Annie's mac-and-cheese. Not the healthiest way of going about food.

But this really feels good, and my energy during the day is much, much better since I've started doing this. For example, this morning, I had my kashi in one of those fabulous pink goblets I bought back in September. Before teaching tonight, I sat down at the cafe near the museum for a quick doppio macchiato, which is not only cheap but tastes much better in a china cup than a paper cup. And then, for the first time in several weeks, I took the time tonight to make a decent dinner. Spaghetti squash with homemade creamy garlic-spinach sauce, topped with shaved parmesan and crushed red pepper; paired with a glass of perfectly-chiled New Zealand sauvignon blanc; followed by a really lovely fresh orange and two fabulous squares of ritzy dark chocolate. I sat down at my little dark wood rolling desk with a nice placemat, my dorm-friendly flameless candle, and enjoyed a nice meal.

This is not for anyone who is not already a foodie. Ditto if you don't like to cook. If reading my post on Chez Panisse bored you, then you should take a different path. But even on a grad student's salary, this is possible - small portions mean small prices, and a little reblochon goes a long way alongside the mantra of "indulgence with balanced restraint." Plus, two of the best-kept secrets for someone with champagne taste on a tap water budget are Australian Shiraz and New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc. A bottle of French Syrah or Sauvignon Blanc is not possible on my salary. New World wines are not only far more affordable, but NZ wines are incredibly good, completely consistent and downright cheap. South African and Chilean wines - haven't found them to be consistent enough yet at the lower prices. Australia and New Zealand, a different story. Try a bottle - absolutely worth the investment of $7-10.

While my size-8 self is really quite fabulous and goddess-like, with my Marilyn Monroe-height (go look that one up!) and background of solid peasant stock on both sides means that a size 8 is just at the high end of a healthy BMI. A high BMI doesn't work for me, just in terms of physical health. And I'm not looking to drop a whole bunch of weight. My energy lately has just been really low and crummy, and I can feel myself crashing after meals, which gets in the way of work and fun. But this kind of new thinking - martini glasses, fabulousness, and food that appeals to a foodie - is just my sort of thing. As yogis and yoginis we want to live healthy lives, but we still want to enjoy all the good things life has to offer. Plus, it's a good impetus to get back to the daily practice (may have fallen off the wagon a little bit there), and we all aspire to the daily practice.

Practicing Holiday Magic

We've just received our first snowfall here in Boston, and while it's not quite enough to make a decent snowman, it is enough to make things look extra-festive. Tonight I'm going to decorate my little pad and turn into into an island of Christmas goodness. And because it is now officially December, even I feel compelled to listen to my eclectic holiday playlist, ranging from Bare Naked Ladies to Ella Fitzgerald to Christmas classical music. Hooray for holiday cheer!

My favorite Christmas song is Christmas Island, both in the original Andrews Sisters and the Ella Fitzgerald versions. It is closely followed by Mele Kalikimaka by Chris Isaak, Christmas Carol by The Nields, and the entirety of Handel's Messiah - yes, the entirety, and not just the Hallelujah chorus. One of the things I plan to do before I die is sing in a production of Messiah. The music is just so thrilling and uplifting and IN ENGLISH! (Intellectual side-note for the similarly anal-retentive: although Handel's magnum opus is often referred to as "the Messiah," this is incorrect. He entitled it simply Messiah; "the Messiah" refers to Josh.) My love of this piece doesn't stem from any deep-seated Christian conviction; rather , the remnants of more than a decade as a classical musician and a cappella singer which gave me the belief that music is one of the ways in which we can touch the divine.

Whether you prefer to celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, the Solstice, or Festivus, the holidays give us many chances for magic. We can be generous to our loved ones and maybe even be generous to strangers. Twinkling lights are especially beautiful now that nighttime falls so early in the day. A little holiday music, some warm mulled wine, and a cookie or two in front of the light of Christmas bulbs or the menorah make for a completely magical way to end the day. Creating these tiny moments of magic make for a great little bit of "off-the-mat" yoga, especially if you create them to be shared with other people.

But you can do create this holiday spirit on-the-mat as well. Vrksasana becomes "Christmas Tree" or "Festivus Bush." Turn your palms to face upward in Vira II to create a feeling of giving and generosity. Imagine a star twinkling between your toes in Shoulderstand or Headstand. Become a twist of holiday garland in Malasana. You get the idea - it's all about adding a little creativity to the asanas and making room for a little more magic and wonder on the mat so you can take that off the mat afterwards. Practicing to gentle holiday music can be fun as well - try Loreena McKennit's albums To Drive the Cold Winter Away and A Winter Garden. If Mannheim Steamroller is more your thing, that would work as well. Just make sure the music isn't something crazy and jarring like "Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer," unless that is your favorite song and you think it would just power you right through a strong vinyasa series.

Academic Booty Call

An addition to the urban dictionary:

Academic Booty Call (n): when an academic, usually a graduate student or budding scholar, travels absurdly far simply to attend a conference or symposium with the sole intention of passing out cards and making contacts with the speakers and attendees.

Usage: "I went all the way to Seattle for an academic booty call, but the quality of the scholarship was so uneven. At least I managed to give out my cards."

I thought spending nine hours on a plane from the East Coast was bad, but I met a woman yesterday who had come in from Cambridge University in the UK. Funnily enough, we were both wearing what seems to have become a sort of uniform for times when female Ph.D. candidates don't have to wear a suit but can't be terribly funky - button-down shirt under thin v-neck sweater with the shirt cuffs turned up over the ends of the sweater sleeves, decent but comfortable and practical pants, hair in low ponytail, light makeup, simple stud earrings. It was pretty funny, and we hit it right off, especially because we shared the same opinion on the farcical keynote speaker.

New pose of the month: Extended Side Angle (Utthita Parsvakonasana). If there is a pose that I actually dislike, this is it - my lungs always feel squished, my shoulders never open, my kidneys never turn up to the sky. But I LOVE working on the bind for this pose because of the way it opens the shoulders, and I've been craving it for at least a week now. Thing is, I'm never consistent enough with the basic pose to really be able to work the bind properly because I just can't stand the feeling in my organs. But, part of the hip tranquil chick manifesto is breathing through challenges, and lately my ujayii has been pretty weak without a teacher there to remind me to breathe. The intention this month will therefore be the same as last month - breathing through challenges - but to up the challenge from last month's project pose, Virasana. Breathing through challenges on the mat is good practice for when you have to breathe through them off the mat, where it is harder to remember what to do in tough times with less meditativeness.

Whirlwind Seattle

I'm in Seattle for a whirlwind trip to see the Seattle Art Museum exhibition "Japan Envisions the West: 16th-19th Century Japanese Art from the Kobe Museum" and its accompanying symposium. Flew in yesterday, fly out tomorrow, and just enough time in between to get together with one of my old flatmates from Beijing who lives here. She came with me to this awful farce of a keynote speech last night - the speaker had clearly come up with the clever title, completely neglected to write the talk, and hadn't even bothered to familiarize himself with the powerpoint that had very obviously been put together by some tech-savvy graduate student (he didn't even know the order of the slides, nor could he work the controls). Plus he made the very dangerous mistake of talking about art when he was not an art historian - not good to do, when the entire audience was filled with scholars of Asian art history. Plenty of comic relief, though - every time he gestured, he whacked the microphone on the podium. And he gestured a LOT.

Afterwards, we two girls went out to her favorite little restaurant in Seattle, Le Pichet. Salade verte, assiette de fromage, assiette de charcuterie, un pichet de vin rouge, du mousse au chocolat - c'est magnifique! Lots of girl talk and catching up, plus that fabulous brand of "you were too good for him anyway, and here's why" that makes close female friends such wonderful treasures. Today is symposium all day, and then a little dinner party tonight to take the edge off a long day of lectures.

Tomorrow, another nine hours of flying, if the Travel Gods decide to smile on me and not delay my flights. The first leg of the trip yesterday had me sitting in front of a family traveling with three girls under the age of six AND THEIR TWO CATS. Holy Cow. I didn't even realize you could take that many creatures on the plane. Flying is such a good exercise in patience and acceptance these days...