the best way to be happy

Okay. I'm feeling glum and dumb. I'm thinking nobody loves me, everybody hates me and I went for a stroll, looking for worms. I came to the library. I expect public libraries to carry interesting magazines but, mostly, they carry mainstream choices. I expect to find obscure literary journals but I don't. I would like to find some Alice Oswald poetry or, at least, a poetry journal that might publish her poetry. Wouldn't that be an amazing thing to find at the Mountain View Public Library this afternoon?! There is no Alice Oswald, not anywhere here.

Before I disclose the best way to be happy, let me relate a library tale.

Back in the Pacific Northwest (where I lived until, like twelve days ago, fifteen days if you count from the time I left the old home and headed for the new), I used the King County Library System. At the Lake Forest branch of the King County Library, they carried a magazine called Christian Woman but they did not carry Ms magazine. I choked. Were there more Christian women in Lake Forest Park than there were feminists? Each time I was at this little library, I maintained a watchful eye on Christian Woman. I was curious to see who came to read it. After months of surreptitiously waiting to see someone, anyone, pick it up and read it, it slowly occurred to me that some kinda Christian folk had asked for the magazine. You know how the religious right can get so insidious, right? Nobody wanted to read that magazine. Nobody ever checked it out. Nobody ever picked it up for a glance. Some Christians, I surmised, had asked the library to carry that magazine.

I had to go to another suburb, to a larger branch of the King County Library system to read Ms. magazine.

The old warrior/lawyer in me fantasized legal action.

The mature adult in me (such as there is) told me to chillax. What did it matter?

One day, unable to follow my inner voice's sound advice, I went up to the desk and asked to speak to the branch manager. Calmly and with what I hoped would come across as genuine warmth but which I confess was somewhat feigned, I pointed out that the branch carried the Christian Woman but not Ms. I asked the branch manager if she thought there were more Christian Women in Lake Forest Park than feminists. I said I thought it was, like, discriminatory to favor an overtly religious magazine over a socio-political-cultural magazine directed at a female audience.

She make some comments about limited budgets and how she had to make choices. "You understand, don't you, Ms. Fitzpatrick, that we can't carry all magazines."

"Oh yes, yes indeed, I do understand," I said, maintaining my feigned cordiality. "But I also understand that you did, indeed, make a choice to carry this Christian magazine. I would just like to understand how you came to not carry Ms.

A battle won. The King County Library/Lake Forest Branch now carries Ms. magazine. I have no foundation in fact for believing my complaint caused the change but, gosh, it was a relief to be able to stop fretting about the absence of Ms at my library.

So. Back to sunny Mountain View's beautiful library. I've already been here many times. With this library system, I can use a service called 'Linc' to get almost any book ever published loaned to me for free from, basically, all the libraries, public and private, in the Bay Area. This is such an awesome service. Back in King County, it took weeks to get books from interlibrary loan. Here in Mountain View, books arrive in a day or two. I pretend that I am a woman of great wealth and that I own one of the most fabulous collections of books in the world and that all these books are mine.

Each time I come to the MV library, I circle the periodicals, checking to see if there is an interesting magazine that I had previously failed to note. I don't know what this might be but I keep looking. While I peramble (I don't know if that is a word but perhaps it should be?) through the very small periodical section, I always check to see if they carry Christian Woman. Praise the goddess, they do not. Christians have not yet chosen to assault the women library patrons of Mountain View. The absence of this magazine assures me, of something.

So. That's what I was doing in the Mountain View Public Library periodical section this afternoon, looking, vaguely, to find something to read that would distract me, from, well, being me.

And there she was: the goddess in the form of Oprah. On the cover of the November 2006 issue of 'O', The Oprah Magazine (I wonder how she deals with her megalomania: in her world, does, like, anyone ever suggest to her that she can be, well, a tad smug?), Oprah was, as always (what is it like to decide to publish a magazine named after yourself and then to also decide that every cover will bear your image because it, like, sells more magazines? When will she be rich enough?). . .well, there was Oprah on the cover, leaning forward (if you have a nice chest, flaunt it on your magazine cover), a gentle tigress. Demure and hot at the same time, flashing a broad appeal.

And the lead story was entitled "The Best Way to do (almost) everything" and then the cover lsited some representative topics. The first topic was "make yourself happy".

Praise the goddess, I told myself, this is why I came into the library. I came in here for two reasons. One, of course, was to get over my disaffection for Oprah. I confess that I did not know I needed to think about Oprah until she beckoned me from the November cover of her homage to egomania. The other reason for coming into the library was to discover how to make myself happy.

Well, I'm a ramblin, I know. There is no denouement to my story. The article includes lots of trivial bromides about how to pick the right bottle of booze to bring as a hostess gift and how to tell a joke or be sexy or how to drop five pounds fast. But there was no specific advice offered on how to make one's self happy. . . unless it is to know how to take vitamins (the article did not explicitly recommend swallowing but I do) and to know how to do the crossword puzzle (who'da thunk that some of the hordes reading O were back home fretting about how to do crossword puzzles well? The world is an interesting place).

I see now that my day is unified under a single theme: I am on my own. Not even Oprah can save me.

Addendum: Everyone can make themselves happier, of course, by losing weight so I share Greta Blackburn's secret (she is quoted in 'O'): As Greta puts it, eating a proper diet is her secret to crashing off five pounds in two weeks. Eat almost nothing the first week and then eat less the second week. Before you know it, Bob's your uncle, Mary's your aunt, you've lost some fat.

Also, fyi, they do carry Ms magazine here in Mountain View.