I’m a Jinius

It is so hot in New York right now that the city feels like it is wrapped in a hot, wet towel. It is so hot that I had three nervous breakdowns in the span of half an hour. It is so hot that you could get drunk off of one beer. It is so hot that when I said goodbye to Ursy on her last night in New York, I cried and had no tears left because I was so dehydrated. No, I still cried like a big baby. But more on that later.

Thursday

For Ursy’s last weekend in New York, we decided to eat at Supper Restaurant in the East Village for her last supper.

Supper is one of my favorite Italian restaurants in the city. It’s laid back, the food is good, and it’s inexpensive. My only complaint is that the hostess acts like the Mayor of Stankonia. I don’t understand the need for such attitude when ostensibly the hostess’s role is to greet and welcome the customers. The hostess sets the tone for the rest of the evening. And she started it on a bitter note. Hello, we are in a recession. If you want asses in your seats then you need to treat people like you actually want them in your restaurant.

Basically, she wouldn’t seat the two of us until Sabbie showed up. Okay, I get that some restaurants don’t like to seat you until your whole party arrives–especially if your restaurant is busy and there are other parties waiting. But we were just three people. It’s not like we were a party of twenty and only two of us had shown up. And the restaurant was not that busy. Plus, did I mention how freaking how it is in New York and that we were grilling on the sidewalk like fucking shawarma?!?!

So Sabbie shows up and we are finally seated. And the rest of the meal was lovely because it’s not really about the restaurant but the people you are with. And these are my favorite lizzadies. Oh, and it also helped that the waiter gave us a bowl of icecream on the house. Fabulosity! (more…)

Many of you regular readers may know that I’m an avid reader of Jezebel.com, Gawker’s feminist little sister blog.

I graduated from a women’s college and it was refreshing to read commentary on politics and pop culture that was both feministy and funny. Jezebel showed that you could care just as much about petro politics and Britney Spears and still be smart and irreverent.

But I go through periods when I have to stop reading it because of the self righteous, better than thou attitude. It’s the kind of blog that makes women feel bad for watching Sex and the City or buying Vogue magazine. Look I buy Vogue because I’m not exactly going to read The Economist while in the bathroom!

And then this happened.*

For the past couple of days, I’ve been trying to figure out why it bothered me so much. Was it the hypocrisy? The same people that made fun of the Carrie Bradshaws and Julia Alisons were making fools of themselves. Or maybe it hit too close to home. I question whether or not I would have done the same thing had I been in that situation. Afterall, what we judge in others is usually a result of what we deplore in ourselves. God knows how many blog posts I’ve devoted to my drunk, stumbling inanities. Would I have bombed like that?

I guess this also raises greater questions of what it really means to be a feminist today. Is it empowering to prove that you can drink just like (or more than) a man?** Is it empowering to tell tales of your drinking adventures of passing out and making out?** Even going beyond the blogosphere, look at how many girls post half naked pics of themselves on msypace or facebook or photos of them passed out drunk somewhere because it’s “funny.” Is that proving that we’ve come a long way?

I think my generation of women has so many conflicting messages about feminism. On the one hand, our forebearers fought for women’s sexual liberation but then on the other hand we have girls gone wild. And then we’re told that we should be equal to men in every way as if that gives us a free pass to drink to the point of oblivion and say fuck you. How do we straddle these two spheres of restriction and excess?

I wonder if the problem is that we don’t have a designated speaker or role model for our generation of women. We don’t have a Betty Friedan or Gloria Steinem that we could all look up to.

Hmmm, I nominate Tina Fey. She’s funny. She’s smart. She’s self-deprecating. And she’s never flashed her drawers to the paparazzi.

*While Thinking and Drinking is ostensibly a comedy panel that touches on serious subjects, I’m not really sure if rape is a great subject for that kind of thing. Rape is not exactly hilaahrious comedy terrain.

**Depends on who you are drinking against

*** Maybe not but it makes for good comedy

Synchronicity.

Carl Jung described it as “meaningful coincidences”.

And, coincidentally, I’ve been seeing this word everywhere.

First, the tv show LOST is all about synchronicity. Characters having chance encounters with others. Earlier this year I read Paul Auster’s Book of Illusions and synchronicity is a running theme in many of his books. Julia Cameron talks about it in her book The Artists Way and Martha Beck also discusses it in Finding Your Northern Star.

Um, can you tell I’ve been reading a lot of self help books? I’ll let you know if they actually help. And don’t worry, you won’t be hearing me chant “Find your spirit” anytime soon.

But what LOST and all these books seem to share is that synchronicity happens when you allow yourself to be open to it. You ask the universe for what you are seeking and then the universe will send these little signs. Why do you think Aladdin’s genie told him to make three wishes? He had to articulate what he wanted before he could receive.

I have my own story on synchronicity. It was about eight years ago. I had just graduated college. I was back in Miami and just desperate to move back to New York. I was jobless. I was broke. I didn’t even have money for a plane ticket back to New York. I needed to find a company that would not only hire me but sponsor a visa. Even though I had all these obstacles ahead of me I was somehow confident that I would make it back to New York. There was no way in hell I was going to allow myself to stay in Miami.

So one day my mother comes back from a doctor’s visit and she tells me that she ran into this woman I used to babysit for. The woman recently gave birth to a baby girl and was having a check-up. The woman tells my mother she needs a babysitter to accompany her and her family on a weekend vacation and she would pay me $500.

Around this time my mother also found out that this company in New York was hiring and they were willing to interview me, and if they liked me they’d sponsor my visa.

So with the 500 bones I made from babysitting, I booked a plane ticket to New York, interviewed at the company, and got a job.

And I’m still in New York.

Maybe it was coincidence. And maybe my mother played a very prominent role in creating these opportunities. But I definitely think that sometimes the universe orchestrates these meaningful coincidences when you really want something and will not settle for anything else. In my case, being stuck in Miami with my dysfunctional family was NOT an option!!!

So here’s an exercise for YOU. In Martha Becks’ book, she has an exercise where you pick some random object–an object you don’t really see all the time– lets say a kangaroo. Then for the next couple of days you will notice that this object will keep popping into your life. You will be seeing this object everywhere or hear people talking about it.

I think the point of this exercise is to hone your intuition. Stop listening to your ipod and reading US Weekly (fellas, you know your read it at your girlfriend’s apartment!) Take the time to observe what is going on around you. You’ll notice there is alot more meaning in mundane things.

Like Shakespeare said: Find tongues in trees, books in running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything.