Ariel Gore

A Quick Brush of Wings

2010-03-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

Sonoma County, 1991

If I wanted to be a writer, I realized, I would have to go where the writers were.

I had to find these people.

These writers.

I had to seek them out and be in their presence and inhale the air they exhaled.

I had to learn from them.

And here was my chance. I saw the ad in the local alternative weekly: An evening with Anne Lamott and Amy Tan. These were maybe the two most powerful thirty-something or forty-something women in the San Francisco literary scene. Anne Lamott and Amy Tan. They would be my foremothers, my teachers. If only I could share this evening with them. Yes.

I had to be there, obviously.

Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.

$150 per person.

I hardly ever drove into the city.

It meant getting Lance to watch the baby. He’d come to California now, too. He lived four blocks from us, was suing me for custody.

It meant the gas and the bridge toll.

It meant tapping the dashboard three times and praying that the Dodge would make it.

This time, it also meant $150.

$150. Just over a quarter of my monthly income.

But what was $150, really? What was a quarter tank of gas and a quarter of my monthly income and a $3 bridge toll when it would make me a writer?

I would meet these women and they would see me—they would see the writer in me and they would lean into me and they would whisper the secrets that writers whisper.

The ad—even seeing that ad—had been destiny. Clearly. I hardly ever read that weekly paper.

I had $21 in the cookie jar for my gas and electricity bill. I only needed another $129 for the ticket. The gas and electric company could wait. If we had to live in the dark for a week or three weeks—what did it matter? This evening was the thing that mattered. An evening with Anne Lamott and Amy Tan.

I showed the ad to Mary, the old woman who’d recently moved into my neighborhood in Petaluma. I bounced Maia on my knee as I opened the newspaper on Mary’s formica kitchen table. I pointed. “Anne Lamott and Amy Tan,” I hummed. I’d been helping Mary around her little government apartment, putting away groceries for her, pulling weeds in her tiny front garden. We’d shared Christmas dinner. I’d invited her over after the man from the food bank called to tell me I was eligible for a free turkey. When I went to pick it up, it turned out to be two chickens—they’d run out of turkeys. But I had some vegetables in the fridge, so I made chicken soup for Christmas dinner and I didn’t skim off the fat. Chicken soup for me and Mary and the baby. We sat in the little dining alcove in my apartment, and she told me this and that about her life. She was Athabaskan Indian, she said. Born up in Alaska but her mother died of tuberculosis and she was adopted out to a white family down in Seattle.

Mary. She had short, black hair and laughing eyes. She looked at the ad for the evening with the writers and said, “sounds like a lot of money.”

But what did Mary know?

She was poor, she was old.

I knew what I had to do.

It was a clear-sky day in Petaluma.

I got Lance to watch the baby.

I used my bill money for the gas and the bridge.

Tom Waits sang “Hang on St. Christopher” on my car radio.

I used the rent money for the ticket.

Amy Tan read something unpublished and showed slides of her grandparents.

Anne Lamott said she’d been a black-belt codependent and had just broken up with a man who wasn’t fit to drink her bath water.

Afterwards, the writers drank punch around a table and people approached them and told them they loved their work and told them they’d changed their lives and told them they liked the talks they’d just given.

I stood against a wall and watched.

I stood against a wall and watched the light change as the sun set over the bay.

I stood against a wall and bit my fingernails.

I cried at Mary’s kitchen table the next morning, cried at what an idiot I’d been. The rain poured outside, flooding the streets and walkways. I would never be a writer, it was true. That counselor in her drab brown office back at the junior college had been right. What was I thinking? I had to come down to earth. This wet earth. I had to figure out how to make a living. I had to figure out how to live. I had a child to take care of.

Mary just smiled at me, shook her head the way she did. “Ariel,” she said. “You are with the writers. Right now and right here you’re with the writers. And here we’re doing the things that writers do. We’re washing the dishes and we’re putting away the groceries. We’re helping each other. We’re paying attention, aren’t we?”

I thought she was sweet, old Athabaskan Mary, but obviously she was kind of doddery. Helping Mary around her apartment was all good and fine, but it was hardly where the writers were. And I wanted to be a writer. My mind wandered. I was back at Fort Mason. Back with the writers and thinking of all the things I might have said to them if I wasn’t so afraid. If they had looked at me.

“I have something for you,” Mary said, interrupting my writer-thought. She stood up, left me there to breathe in my self-pity.

A few minutes later she came back with a slim volume. A Quick Brush of Wings by Mary TallMountain. “My new book,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to give you a copy.”

I looked at the title and I looked at the author’s name for a long time before I let it sink in.

Mary.

TallMountain.

And with that she leaned into me and she whispered the secrets that writers whisper. And I breathed her in and I became one.

Mary

Are Zines Dead?

2010-03-06T10:17:00.000-08:00

Pat asks:

Warmest greetings, Ariel.

I'm proud to say you've been discovered twice in my household: my wife read Hip Mama when she was preggers with our own hip baby, Wee Gwennie...and I read How to be a Famous Writer after publication of my first book, Mind.Net.

And I must say, that book's spoken to me. I'm re-reading it now, for the third time, and almost finished (again).

Somehow, though, I didn't put any of its best suggestions to practice when (timidly) promoting my first book. I did a little guerilla marketing, with some posters and surreptious poster-hanging on the local college campus...and one signing at the local Borders...and got one decent review in the local paper (7 freakin months after sending them a copy!).

Next time it will be different. My second book, Refrigerator Magnets, is coming out soon, maybe as early as this month, and this time there will be no timid marketing. This is the book I've wanted to write for...well, ever, really. So I'd be a criminal unto myself if I didn't do all I can to get it in front of all eyes possible.

Which leads me to my question. I love the idea of doing a zine. I want to do a zine. I want to do a print zine because - well, I'm not sure exactly why but I feel it strongly. Print is zine and zine is print.

When I told my wife my plan (which is still hazy at best, btw, and mostly lacking a theme)...she looked at me with pure wonder as to how she could have married such a moron. "You know print is dead, right?" she asked.

My wife is a brilliant artist and knows a lot about nearly everything. I respect her opinion utmost. But I disagree wholeheartedly here.

Because I'm not trying to get rich off it, and not expecting to print thousands, or even many hundreds, of copies. I'm just seeing a hip-looking arts-and-literature zine, with a hip-sounding title of Untitled or maybe Not Yet Titled, sitting by the cash registers in hip record stores and tattoo shops. Maybe it's free, maybe it's a buck. Who knows.

All I know is I love that idea, hazy as it is, so much that I'd chase after it even if I didn't have a book to promote.

So I ask you, arbiter, and adviser, is print dead? Is my only hope the web?

I hope not. Nothing against the web, I wallow in the web. This writer loves print, is all.

I have huge appreciation for any time you've been able to take to read and think about my dilemma. If you've time to respond, I swear I'll do repeated backflips.

hip solidarity,

Pat Worden

Ariel Answers:

That's a good question. Can I put it up on my blog and see if anyone comments? I AM SERIOUS.

You know, I love print. And folks have been saying print-is-dead for decades and decades (with the advent of radio, movies, TV, then internet...) But you don't sit on the toilet with an ezine. You don't go to bed with Kindle (or at least it's totally unsexy if you do). A print zine has tactile validity... you can take it to the park.

And when there is some natural disaster and the electricity is off for more than a few hours, the only archives will be paper. Everything that happened online will be irretrievable by the archeologists of the future. Archival quality, limited press run, print stories rule the world.

I am planning a new zine myself!

So I am of the mind that print is not dead.

But what do I know?

Maybe I'm just a fogey.

* * *

What do you think?

2010-03-04T19:13:00.001-08:00

Calliope's Holistic Happiness Plan

2010-03-04T16:48:00.000-08:00

Kari asks

Hi Ariel,

Just gobbled up your book in one day and then re-read it taking notes a few days later. Thoroughly enjoyed it.

I’ve read your other books and was thrilled to see that you wrote a book on “happiness” one of my favorite topics!

One thing I’m curious about, you mention one of your experts, Calliope and her “holistic action plan” and six month evaluations. Then at the end of the paragraph (pg. 152) it then mentions her “ten week plan” but says no more. I’m curious what that plan was all about? I think I will try the 6 month evaluation technique, but like the idea of more frequency, so I’m curious.

Thanks!
Kari

Calliope answers

When I was working on how to get myself out of my the slump I was heading towards, I put together my finances and tried to figure out which modalities would best help me. I decided that I had to create a 10-week holistic action plan. I chose 10 weeks because that’s how many I had left before the end of the year.

I chose community acupuncture first . These clinics are popping up all over America. Their premise is to make health care accessible and affordable. Because it works with the whole body, it was perfect for me--and all of us, really! So, I went to acupuncture once, and sometimes twice, per week.

At the same time I was developing my wellness plan, I met a budding massage therapist and told him what I was designing. We made a deal that for every 3rd person who booked a massage with him, he would give me a free one. So, I set up five on a pre-pay, and then I was able to get additional massages for free because once I told people the deal I was working toward, and how fabulous my massages were, they were quick to make appointments.

I had eight sessions with a counselor who specializes in holographic repatterning. Each week, I went in with a plan to talk about something I wanted to release and let go. She used my verbal cues and muscle testing to discover what I was really holding on to and we worked together using various modalities to try to move the energy through my body.

I was a yoga teacher at the time, so it was fairly easy to incorporate yoga into my wellness plan. In addition to teaching my three to five classes per week, I made myself stretch for one class on my own, and I completed a 40-day meditation.

I felt like this really helped me move some stagnant energy through and I was able to approach many of the recordings and patterns that were inside me with a different point of view once the new year began.

It was like I had a new pair of shoes to walk down my new path.

xoxox

Words from a bag

2010-03-04T16:37:00.000-08:00

I asked the writers in Newport to pick a word from my handy word bag and write for 4 minutes... Simple enough & no time for writers block.

CHEESE

I love cheese- havarti, blue, Dubliner Irish cheddar, cream cheese. Everything is better with cream cheese.. Stilton with lemon, parmesan baked with pecans, my latest favorite treat….But… Weight Watchers ruins my relationship with cheese. Laughing Cow makes me cry. String cheese is a drawn out exercise as I peel skinny shreds of the little stick of cheese- shredded lengths that I can make last the whole car ride home.

When I open the fridge, I give a side glance to the drawer that holds my precious cheese. Through clear plastic, I see a log of goat cheese… green-grey mold slowly creeping along the edge where months ago I ate my cheese with abandon.

Now I slowly open the drawer, eyeing the selection, scanning slowly, sadly, and then with self-righteous conviction, peel open my 1 point wedge of Laughing Cow imposter cheese.

—Sandy Post

ZOO

Kate and I go to the zoo on rainy days, when her little boy is in daycare. The animals are bored or sleepy, the ocelot yawns and the bear is sleeping and the elephants are standing still. We can just wander and talk, or not, about whatever or the animals. The lorikeets are the only ones that are glad to see us. We go into the netted aviary, buy tiny cups of sugar water for a quarter, and they flutter around, teasing us and each other. One will land on my wrist and dip, another will chase it away and land there itself, one lands on Kate’s hand, drinks.

Kate tells me her sister is a bitch, cries, I am so happy to have as lorikeet on my wrist drinking sugar water from a tiny cup that it is hard to listen, and another lorikeet lands on my shoulder, I feel it clicking its beak, waiting. I try to be patient and tell Kate yes I think her sister is a bitch, plus she has no lorikeet, and here’s another quarter.

When we leave the aviary I drop my empty paper cup in the trash can and it is full of a hundred empty paper cups.

—Joanna Rose

TEMPRATURE

They say you engage much more of your brain when the pen is in your hot little hand but my fingers are flying across the keyboard creating heat with an intelligence of their own. Perhaps they have not calculated the wisdom of fingers - fingers which have pushed crayons stiffly across Kindergarten pictures and pens which have formed their first letters on school tablets. Fingers gripped the handles of bicycles with exciting fear as your Dad said, “It’s okay, I’m going to let go now.” Fingers cautiously curled around your first boyfriend and then extended with confidence to accept the slippery cold ring from your last as you said, “I do.” Fingers stuffed wedding cake in his mouth and would cook each last supper as the years marched on. Fingers would smooth the buttery vernix into the new wrinkles of your first baby’s cheeks as your eyes squinted at each other and sealed the earthly connection of your souls who already knew much more. Fingers knowingly guided the mouths of each new baby to your nipples which had waited in the wings all those years filling other roles until they could fulfill their destiny. Fingers caressed the silky hair and gripped the sweaty miniatures of themselves as you escorted your toddlers into childhood. Fingers are wise beyond their years. And all I have left of my son are contained in their memory. So don’t tell me about my brain.

—Kelly Kittel

Since I hardly ever get to NYC, beautiful Gabrielle sent her performance to my inbox...

2010-03-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

Happiness is a Cheerful Housewife with a Housekeeper and a Sitter...

2010-03-01T09:19:00.000-08:00

This story is insane!

This is what I was trying to write about in Bluebird... but there is often this push-pull weirdness when you are trying to write about an issue that should have been settled a hundred years ago. But this bizarre traditionalist perfectionism is still being shoved down our throat. This top-selling book for American women "shows," according to its author, "that you don't have to do something radical."

It's funny, because my local snarky newspaper sort of panned Bluebird, saying, "Can a woman be smart, empowered, and happy?"..If you've got half a brain, you've already figured it out..."

But this is what I get when I open the The New York Times...

It's the happiness project from hell:

Don't worry your pretty little head about doing anything radical.

Clean your closets.

Hire a personal trainer.

Put artificial sweetener on your salad instead of that bad fattening oil.

Speak with good cheer.

It's really so exactly like the Victorian good-wife manuals I read up on... I do not know what to say.

I mean, am I the only one who thinks this story is frightening? Or is it just like "Yeah. yeah, Ariel, go on a diet and maybe you'll understand."?

Miriam Sagan reviews

2010-02-18T18:45:00.000-08:00

The beautiful Miriam Sagan likes to read about happiness...

Salon interview

2010-02-05T20:26:00.000-08:00

Sounds like me on a triple espresso...

Read it here...

Happiness is a beautiful woman, a ukelele, red curtains, pendant lamps, and absinthe...

2010-02-05T14:42:00.000-08:00

Linda Rand reflects on being a part of the research for Bluebird:

It has definitely changed me. When I was participating in Ariel's happiness project, I realized the emotion happiness co-existed with other emotions. It wasn't some rarefied state to attain... that I could be sad or depressed but find that little joy within myself, at being alive, or having a home, or beautiful kids...

Since then I've been using it as a sort of barometer of where I'm at...or an internal compass of sorts:) when I'm lost I follow the thread of joy and end up back on my path. today my life is less frustrated and compromised. I'm an artist who makes marionettes and mixed media and have sold pieces, including commissions for about a year. I had more bartender jobs than I could keep and have whittled it down to two places. One is a retro supper club and lounge where I am surrounded by amazingly talented people. When I first walked into the place there was a '30s hot jazz act (Midnight Serenaders), a beautiful woman in garters and a ukelele, red curtains, pendant lamps, absinthe, and I thought, "this place is for me," and I ended up working there within the month. To this day, when I'm confused intellectually (the mind is a great tool but a terrible master some wise soul said) I find that feeling... is it happiness or something else? Is it restriction, dread... numbness? then I know whether it's right or wrong.... at least I have a clue.

I believe this was the first time anyone asked me how I achieved happiness...

2010-02-05T14:35:00.000-08:00

Margaret, another woman on the Bluebird counsel of experts, says:

Given the dearth of inquiry toward women and their personal experience with happiness, I found Ariel's research revolutionary. I am a person who is resilient in spite of hardship and I make happiness a key factor in decision making. But I believe this was the first time in my life that anyone--friend, family, or professional--asked me how I achieved happiness. The other women in the group were diverse in personal experience, so I heard a rich variety of opinions not only on ways to attain happiness, but also the importance such a goal may or may not deserve.

A slight shift in consciousness

2010-02-03T15:53:00.001-08:00

For Bluebird, I asked women to keep happiness journals--just simple notes about the best moments in each day. We all then met and talked about our experience, and about happiness.

Now, many months later, I asked some of the women who participated in the research to reflect on the experience.

Roslyn Farrington says this:

I really loved the process. I love that we all independently got the same assignment and then when we came together it was lovely to see how everyone took on the task and interpreted the homework. For me, it helped me to see more clearly how I had been unconciously thinking of and practicing happiness as somethig that comes from outside of me rather than cultivating a "spirit of happiness" that was based on my internal relationship with myself. I intellectually knew that happiness came from within, but the daily tracking of feelings of happiness helped me to know that I wasn't always living what I knew. So the shift for me was a slight shift in consciousness and attention.

Upcoming Portland & San Francisco Readings

2010-02-02T22:41:00.000-08:00

I'll be talking about / reading from Bluebird in Portland and San Francisco soon...

Wednesday, February 3rd - 7:30 pm

POWELL'S CITY OF BOOKS

1005 W. Burnside, Portland

Tuesday, February 23rd - 7 pm

BROADWAY BOOKS

1714 NE Broadway, Portland

Wednesday, March 24 - 7 pm

MODERN TIMES

888 Valencia, San Francisco

2010-02-02T20:07:00.000-08:00

"What actually makes this book sing though is Ariel charming and witty writing style. She tells stories of her family and stories of her friends. Women she knows well and barely knows at all, come forward to say what works for them, what makes them happy. No two stories are alike but all have a familiar ring. Happiness is found in kissing the head of a baby and smelling in his scent, a hike in a favorite place, or an evening spent alone in a bath. Guess what happiness industry? Surprise, surprise, happiness actually doesn’t cost you anything — perhaps though, it might be worth the cost of this book."

--from Wise Bread

I wanted to like The Happiness Project

2010-02-02T10:21:00.000-08:00

Has anyone read The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin?

Is it just me, or is this book totally barf-worthy?

She talks about "eating healthy" with her friend on the "no fake food" resolution & then they put artificial sweetener on their SALAD (instead of dressing... fewer calories! Yippee!)

This is the nonsense that gives Americans in general & positive psychology in particular a bad name.

GIVE ME OLIVE OIL!

Did we really claw our way to the top of the food chain to eat artificial sweetener on our salad?

I wanted to like The Happiness Project. Really I did.

The premise is right up my alley: A woman--a wife and a mother no less--sets out to make herself happier. And she does so without apology. Radical. Gretchen's character, with all her chart-making anxiety, is endearing. She's well-read and well-educated. Maybe that's why it's all the more maddening to watch her poison her salad and make resolutions like "don't eat hours' d'vours" and "make three new friends" and "unclutter your closets."

Am I really being invited to diet and make fake friends and do housework for happiness?

My daughter doesn't usually go in for feminist conspiracy theories, but she took one look at the book and said, quite seriously, "Maybe she was hired by the government. Just like Taylor Swift. Reverting back to the 50s-housewife kitchen-sink diaries so we won't pay attention to the war and the economy."

I appreciated my daughter's immediate clarity. Here I'd sat with the book for hours, allowing it to make me feel like a loser. I don't consider myself poor, but suddenly I was thinking, Wow, if I can't afford a personal trainer, a professional photographer for the kids, and an organic salad (with saccharine) at a New York deli, how will I ever be happy??

Positive psychologist Martin Seligman has said, "when nations are wealthy and not in civil turmoil and not at war, they start asking what makes like worth living, and that's what positive psychology is about."

But I reject the idea that positive psychology can only be a psychology of privilege.

Rich people have every right to their feelings, sure, but materialism isn't what ultimately makes people happy--materialism is what's killing the planet.

In the introduction to The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin makes a point to underline how "fortunate" she is--with her tall, dark, handsome, and well-employed husband and their healthy children. But she also states, as so many writers on happiness do, that she can't really define happiness. "I'll know it when I see it," they say.

Happiness is hard to define--it's a vast human emotion--but if we're going to consider something deeply--if we're going to write a whole book about it--I think we can venture at least a working definition.

Canadian positive psychologist Paul T.P. Wong defines happiness as “the capacity to rejoice in the midst of suffering.” I like that definition. Happiness isn’t the absence of suffering. Happiness doesn’t have to be about privilege or denial.

“Your definition of happiness will depend upon who you are--” Masura Emoto writes in The Hidden Messages in Water, “but do you have a sense of peace in your heart, a feeling of security about your future, and a feeling of anticipation when you wake up in the morning? If we can call this happiness, then would you say that at this moment you are happy?”

Clearly happiness is hard to muster when we have real survival anxiety, but if happiness requires a personal trainer and an "over buying" problem as we read about in The Happiness Project--Well, I don't know.

But next time I get $10, I'm spending it on olive oil--& I'm sharing it with someone who'll appreciate a little fat.

the point of poetry?

2010-02-02T09:37:00.000-08:00

Why bother with art? In the wake of the earthquake in Haiti, and when millions have no food and water, Scott Christian wonders on Salon.com: Who gives a shit about Picasso? What's the point of poetry?

My mother has lung cancer even though she never smoked. A visual artist, she wonders if she's ill from years of inhaling poisonous paint fumes and fixants.

My daughter clicks to private design school websites. They cost $21,000 a year, $28,000 a year, $42,000 a year.

Is art a privilege?

Is it a necessity, like food and water?

Is it poison?

I wrote a book on happiness, but now that it's out there's a recession on and the journalists call for their interviews and complain: Americans can't afford happiness anymore.

But I was poor for long enough to know that happiness is one of the free things--like love, like creativity.

In the rubble, a woman is singing.

Erg to Amazon. Just when I was getting happy.

2010-01-31T11:41:00.000-08:00

So, I finally get a serious nod in The New York Times Book Review and Amazon & my publisher are in some hot dispute!

***

Imagine my puzzlement when someone emailed me Friday evening complaining that my book wasn't available on Amazon.com.

I checked it out myself: Indeed, it was listed, but no buy button. You could purchase it from a third party, but you couldn't even pre-oder it from Amazon. It looked like it was out of print.

I emailed my editor and publicist and they responded that they were totally miffed--that they would try to get to the bottom of it. I guess no one told them, just as no one told me, that all books from Macmillan, one of the largest publishers in the United States, had vanished from Amazon.com. Macmillan's imprints include Farrar, Straus & Giroux, St. Martins Press and Henry Holt.

The disappearance, it turns out, is the result of a disagreement between Amazon and book publishers that has been brewing for the last year. Macmillan, like other publishers, asked Amazon to raise the price of electronic books from $9.99 to around $15. Amazon said no. Macmillan pushed the point, and Amazon responded by removing Macmillan books--and not just the ebooks.

According to Publishers Marketplace, all of Macmillan's books--including bestsellers, top releases, and Kindle editions--were removed from Amazon's site. Macmillan Kindle titles all lead to pages that read, "We're sorry. The Web address you entered is not a functioning page on our site." It's the first shot across the purchasing bow in big publishers' efforts to reset ebook pricing above the loss-leader $9.99 price point and retake control over that pricing by moving from the wholesale selling model to an agency selling model.

Kindle customers further reported on Amazon forums that any Macmillan books that were on their "wish lists" disappeared from those lists with no explanation, as apparently did Macmillan sample chapters that had been downloaded previously.

Macmillan has answered only with a paid announcement in Publishers Marketplace addressed to its authors: "You are a vast and wonderful crew. It is impossible to reach you all in the very limited timeframe we are working under, so I have sent this message in unorthodox form. I hope it reaches you all, and quickly. Monday morning I will fully brief all of our editors, and they will be able to answer your questions. I hope to speak to many of you over the coming days."

It's a wild development in book publishing and book selling, and of course disappointing and deflating for me as an author to have my book caught up in it...

***

Moral: Shop your local independent.

Other moral: The publishing industry sucks.

Is writing worth anything? In the age of digital media, do words and ideas have value--or is paper the only thing that has value in the marketplace?

Does Amazon have the power to set all the rules of publishing and book selling? Should they? Is their unannounced action on a Friday evening fair play?

Where do you buy your books?

(Lots of folks have been writing saying they want to boycott Amazon but can't beat their prices. Here is a place to get books cheap: Strand Books

Feminist Review on Bluebird

2010-01-19T11:48:00.000-08:00

This short but meaningful book is a smart combination of self-help, memoir, and academic study. Gore does not surmise a remedy for the blues, she does not use her life as an anecdote to overcome defeat or as a guiding light toward beatitude, nor does she use statistics and theory to expose her education. Instead, Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness is a collection of wise womanhood, the crannies of optimism that are too often ignored.

With eloquent emotional pacing, Gore forms a convincing argument that happiness, particularly among women, has been historically understudied and oversimplified in her academic field. She asks, “How is it that psychology— once envisioned as a great healing art—has gotten to this place where our neuroses are considered so much more valid than our resiliences?” Gore bravely takes on the secret of joy by combining her personal memoirs with history, science, and first person accounts of real women experiencing real happiness. Her words have the contagious effect of positivism without the obnoxious, evangelistic ethos found so often in the self-help aisle.

the generosity of happiness

2010-01-09T12:49:00.001-08:00

Some folks worry that happiness is selfish. My grandmother taught me otherwise. Read more...

BLUEBIRD—New book drops January 19

2010-01-08T17:25:00.000-08:00

You can order Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness right now...

Praise for Bluebird

Ariel Gore is one of the best feminist writers of our times— perhaps the most eloquent and sensitive of all. In her latest book, she expertly filets the plastic bluebird of happiness to reveal its faintly beating heart.

—Susie Bright

Appealingly personal and genuinely interesting.

—The New York Times Book Review

Can a woman be smart, empowered and happy? The answer is yes — but Gore must go on a fascinating journey into the history of women, science and psychology to find out.

—New York Post

Thoughtful, funny, and inspiring, Gore is a down-to-earth guide to the elusive human quest for happiness.

—Booklist

Bluebird is the eclectic, funny, and honest chronicle of this empowering feminist quest for bliss.

—Bust Magazine

Evidence that no one gets bullied into fake cheerfulness more than American women.

—Elle

Bold and whip-smart, Bluebird offers a striking, often defiant take on how modern women find joy.

—BookPage

Bluebird: Women And The New Psychology of Happiness is an excellent book for any woman, as well as for men who care about women and society. It should definitely be a must-read for those psychologists who continue to ignore the possibility of a healthy, free reality for women.

—Lone Star Ma

Female readers of positive psychology books will like this one, and the many fans of Noelle Oxenhandler's The Wishing Year and Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love will enjoy Gore's personal narrative.

—Library Journal

Everybody, it seems, wants to know why women aren't happy. But Bluebird suggests that maybe that's the wrong question. In reframing the age-old, exasperated query of what women really want—from themselves, their partners, their jobs, and their families—Gore's exploration of happiness offers a probing, inspiring, and deeply humane alternative to the powerful positive-thinking industry. Bluebird is radical in the truest sense—and as a recovering pessimist, I'll be keeping it handy.

—Andi Ziesler, editorial director of Bitch Magazine

It's time to register for the Spring writing class - CLASS FULL

2010-01-05T09:14:00.000-08:00

This is best writing class I have ever taken! Almost painlessly you got us to write, write, write. And for me got at some new great material.

--Kitty Torres

Eight-week class runs February 20th – April 20th
ONLINE CLASS LIT STAR TRAINING
Taught by Ariel Gore

This class is the creative jolt we all need -- for writers wanting to work on either memoir or fiction -- we'll make time to write, create new material with weekly deadlines, and improve our craft with practice and critique. Appropriate for writers working on longer projects as well as those who want to write to assignments and produce short essays and stories. The pace is quick and energizing--you won't even have time to worry about creative blocks.

Class combines online discussion/critique, email, and telephone conference call. Class size is limited, so please sign up early. $275

Email arielgore at earthlink dot net with questions.

$90 deposit saves your spot - balance due when class starts

Confessions of a Lousy Yogi

2009-12-14T13:54:00.000-08:00

When I stared going to yoga classes, I figured my learning curve would be like it is with most things: I'd start out as the bumbling beginner in the back row and then, perhaps slowly, I'd get the hang of it.

I wasn't deluded. I knew I'd never be as agile as the teenager in the front row or as strong as the ex-Marine in the corner. But with time and practice, I figured I'd get competent. Pretty soon, I'd be one of the folks that newbies eye when they lose track of the pose flow. Maybe I'd even learn to do a headstand.

And so with these humble dreams, I joined the ranks of all the unemployed adults in my town, donned comfortable stretchy clothes, and bought my first punch card.

But, alas, after eight months of practicing three to six times a week, I have improved. . . not at all. I am perpetually the apple-shaped lady in the back row who falters in tree pose, who tips over in eagle pose, who cannot, for the life of me, when bent forward in downward dog, ever seem to be able to step or hop my feet between my hands. Or anywhere near my hands.

Even corpse pose eludes me. I broke my tailbone when I was pregnant with the little one, so lying flat on my back smarts.

My partner says I'm getting stronger. She assures me that, yes, there is some tactile benefit to all these "warrior twos" and sun salutations, but I think my well-defined biceps might just as easily be explained by the fact that the baby keeps getting heavier.

Yoga teachers are fond of reminding their students that yoga is not a competitive sport. "No judgment," they say. "Be where you are."

And I'm not really here to judge myself. Or be any place else. But it does seem curious that a girl can suck at something and continue to suck at it no matter how much of it she does.

No matter, I remind myself. As I learned from punk philosophy, it's OK to do things you're not good at. The journey is the destination, man.

It's kind of a relief, actually. I never have to worry that I'm going to be put on the spot and asked to "demonstrate" for the class. In fact, on several occasions I have been asked to move my mat so that some beginner will have a view of someone else--anyone else.

My first yoga teacher apparently didn't share my punk philosophy. He was encouraging enough at first, but pretty soon he was fed up. "Ariel!" he'd snap. "You're not paying attention!"

I was paying attention. But I've always had a really hard time remembering my right from my left-so if you say, "Ariel, lift your right leg," there's that moment's delay as I quickly check the tattoo I know is on my right forearm and then make the calculation that means I have to lift the opposite leg.

When the rest of the class was in sync, he'd yell, "Ariel, you're spacing out! The rest of my class is a flock of birds!"

What did that make me? The turd?

So I gathered up my comfy stretch pants and my yoga mat and I found a new studio where the teachers are so busy chanting OM that they either don't notice that I never seem to get better or they're at peace with the universe and therefore don't care.

It would be fun if practice made perfect.

Or even proficient.

But I guess sometimes practice just makes practice.

Namaste.

Papergirl flow

2009-11-25T07:41:00.000-08:00

I fold newspapers in the still dark morning. I fold them in three and snap a rubber band around the middle.

I am the first in our neighborhood to know that Mount St. Helens has erupted, that Ronald Reagan has won the presidency by a landslide, that John Lennon has been murdered.

My fingers black with ink, I pack the newspapers into the metal basket of my sparkly blue three-speed bicycle. I pedal fast. I spread the news...

Think Feminism Made Women Unhappy? Try Television

2009-11-06T13:17:00.001-08:00

"Commercialism is a vacuum," my mother warned me. "It will suck you in."

I was seven or eight years old and my mother was running a bath for me. I imagined being sucked down the drain into a wet underworld of nefarious Disney characters.

I was getting the lecture because I'd been caught watching television beyond my allotted hour and, even more horrifying to my mother, I'd been making my Christmas list during the commercials.

I figured I was multi-tasking.

My mother figured otherwise. "How do you think you can figure out what you want while the commercials are bombarding you with images of what they want you to want?" my mother asked me. To her eyes, I was a sitting duck.

Later that night, she picked up our television and lugged it out the garage, never to be seen again.

"Thanks a lot," my sister snarked...

Read more on my blog at Psychology Today

What would balloon boy do?

2009-10-23T18:15:00.000-07:00

Oh, balloon boy, I've been thinking about you. I've been imagining you in my memoir workshop 20 years from now, 30 years from now.

In the derby of fucked-up childhoods, you just might win.

Oh, balloon boy. I grew up among Californians who waited for aliens. Sometimes I thought they were so crazy, so blood-thirsty. But the reality-TV vampires wait for you with much more anger, much more zeal.

Balloon boy, I hope you didn't get in too much trouble for blurting the family secret to Wolf Blitzer. You were only six. And, you know what? They had it coming.

Someone had to stop the madness, stop the bullshit. You were only six, balloon boy, but you did it. You are my hero.

Speak truth to power, as the Quakers say. Speak it on CNN, kid.

You are my hero, balloon boy.

Whenever I think, Wow, it would be easier to lie right now, I will think of you.

What would balloon boy do?

Balloon boy would tell the truth.

I just heard a beautiful and fucked-up song about you, balloon boy. You might like it.

You can listen to it HERE.

But of course it isn't really a song about you. It's a song about the rest of us. It's a song about all the CNN-watchers and the CNN-reporters and the people who cannot deal with the pain of their own lives looking, watching, hoping for the worst.

But you are the best, balloon boy.

You are the very best.