I tell some hard truths. Don’t be misled by the mirthful lilt of my title. Uncle Bob here will do his best to help you be happy, but none of this means diddly-squat if you can’t face harsher aspects of our everyday journey.

It might not even be safe. I don’t know. I can’t really say what is right for anyone else, sometimes even myself. As those of you who honored me by reading my book, The Great Book of Bob, are aware, I’m kind of a special case. I would never claim to be better than others. I just think all of us need to consciously endeavor to be a little less foolish and a lot more happy. It’s something we all need to work on.

I’m sure not complaining.

I’m not cold or damp or lost to the shifting hell of homelessness this day.

I’ve had a good education, have had some decent jobs and career opportunities, have a reasonably strong back for an oldish fellow and can still drive a nail or a truck or whatever. I have enough at this phase of my life to afford to sit in a coffeehouse and drink $3 coffee, eat an oatmeal-raisin cookie, and expend bodily and spiritual energies fully engaged in the non-profit enterprise that is my life’s work and art.

I’m not alone. Carol is my wife and ever my best friend. Kristin is my daughter and ever my other best friend. My sister Nancy and all her progeny are wonderful. I have friends who are smart and funny and willing to help me with heavy lifting. I’m not alone.

So, who the hell am I, clearly blessed among humans upright upon the Earth, to preach to anyone about happiness? What do I know about the crap that brings you down when I have it all so good?

Hey, I’ve had every bit as much opportunity to be miserable as most of you. I could be mired by layers of debt and insecurity. I could be hungover this bright autumn morn. I could be crushed under the brutal thumbs of pitiless authority, misspent love, and oppression. I could hate myself for the sins of some allegorical Eden dwellers or the sins of my own flesh and mind. I could be miserable. Misery is an equal opportunity provider.

Here’s a fast version of a sequence of happenstance and decision that describes a phase of my life. A real stickler for accuracy could point out certain flaws in this chronology, but as a concoction of approximation, it’s all somewhat true to the times, the people, and yours truly.

When I had a condo, I had a mortgage and, thus, I had a job I couldn’t quit. When I had a job I couldn’t quit, I loved to drink beer and simulate inklings of freedom to get me through the evenings I put in between shifts at the workmill. When I spent my days at the workmill (often begun with a hangover), I had to kiss ass like all of us who don’t own the workmill have to do. When I kissed ass I felt like less of a valuable and honorable person, I misspent the trust and belief of love and got my butt dumped. When my butt was dumped I said the hell with nets of obligation, sold my debt-ridden condo, worked myself out of debt (cheap apartments, beat-up old cars, Goodwill clothes etc.), moved high up into the wild mountains and lived in a tipi for five years. When I lived in my Tipi, I talked to my spirit guide Crow and to my friend Dead Jack and to his cousin God, and I laughed and wept and danced and found moon-star nights and storm-raged days and bitter-honest cold and the soul of three-chord banjo tunes and the Love of it all. When I found the Love of it all, I found my loved ones still waiting for me. And here I am.

(Of course it was never really that simple. I never did abandon any of the important elements of my life. My wife Carol remained my best friend throughout the ten-year hiatus of our vows—we kept the family love and just took a break from the rest. All of it, the jobs, the expectations of others, the journey from Condo to the mountain was more complex than needs to be told. But the gist of this progression is true. True enough that I can say, as of this day, no one in this world owes me a dime, an apology, or a moment’s infusion of obligation; nor do I owe a soul in this world a dime, an apology, or an iota of my self. If I give you a buck, it is payment due or gift bestowed; if I speak of regret, it is honest contrition, not penitence; if I help you or comfort you or love you, it is not a debt I pay, it is a blessing I give.)

So...like so many of us, I could be owned by banks, damned by preachers, nightly drunk and daily despised by myself.

But, fortunately, I am not.

I would never be so presumptuous as to try to prescribe a course of action for anyone. My own way has been, and still is more a matter of happenstance and luck than good sense anyway. No. I won’t waste your time with advice. I’ve got nothing here but some good tales to tell, some ideas about the ways of the world, some heart-felt good wishes for your life, dear reader. That’s all.

Listen. I know that everything is bullshit until it is life-proven and believed by experience. I know that. My happiness is just that: my happiness. Your happiness, misery, joy or depression are all your own. I don’t make claim to any of it.

I write this book in hopes that my stories, theories, blathering bilge and sublime prayers may be of help to you in avoiding the burden, the curse of bitterness. It’s no fun living in a world of bitchy whiners, angry jerks, and cranky bastards.

You know what I mean.

Happy and easy—I don’t think so. Not in the world I tell. Matters profound, intimate; Cosmic and common; cruel and blissful; deeply mundane and sweetly eternal, are seldom honestly confronted without a great deal of effort. If happiness were as easy as a two-beer buzz or a Caribbean cruise, I could write this guidebook to good times in a paragraph: Pop a top, Bogart a joint, tune in the 24-hour sitcom rerun station and grin ‘til we croak. AMEN. Just sit back and let our inner stupidity blather safely and snugly on in sedating credo of blah-dom and lah-de-dah ad infinitum.

Happiness is an art and art is never easy, never known to the resting mind, never the truth of drunken mumble or stony, far-out ritual of escape. Never “no money down—no payments until summer.” Never.

Forget the Febreze Air Freshener! Cigars, week-old socks, and boiled cabbage actually do stink. Face the truth (change your socks, smoke outside, forbear the allure of sauerkraut, etc.) or live an empty, sickly sweet, air-freshened facade of a life.

None of what we’ll confront here is easy, nor is it dull, bland, or vacuous.

For example: Death.

oh, what a dismal mess, this death of flesh.

The Gods got the Grand Canyon right—

and the subtlety of smiling lips

and the sound of seas upon the rocky shore,

and rhythm and song and hot-sweet love

and cold clear snowfield mornings,

and child giggles

and the smooth slither of green grassy snakes

and the thunder-and-lightning thrill of storms.

Yes!

and the deathbed agony,

the indignity,

the embarrassing vulnerability

of mortal surrender—

if you ask me,

these are major screw ups

in the design department.

There is blood and trauma in birth,

and shit and writhing angst in death.

“Pressure hell! This is god-awful,”

she screams as she contorts

in contraction and presses life

through her taut and precious portal of bliss.

And when, with compassionate, surgical precision,

you shoot a sick old horse in the head,

forget the harps.

It’s road apples and fart-songs, believe me.

So, where’s the worth, the happiness

in these

blundering truths of stain and stench?

It’s in the ache of it all. That’s where. It is the undeniable, the inevitable, the richly terrible truth of reality risked and known and, for all the shrieking bliss of orgasm and bah-ha hilarity of mirthful days and sob-aching sorrow of heartbreak, it is just that: It is real. It’s the deal we live with, and it is the stuff of happiness.

So, when I walked into a room of high school students to give a talk about writing and art and such with a banjo hung over my shoulder and said, “Today we’re going to kill Ludwig van Beethoven,” it did garner the attention of the participants. “What’s that crazy lookin’ fuzzy old dude up to?” they mumbled as I carefully placed the banjo on the desk and pulled out some readings from my backpack.

Banjos are wonderful instruments, yet the brunt of many a musician’s joke. (What’s the difference between a banjo song and the sound of a sack of rusted door knobs and aluminum pie pans bouncing off the tail end of a junk wagon onto a concrete highway south of Texarkana? Answer: There’s a difference?) But, I’ll tell you something, especially those of you who look askance at this humble picker from a classical piano bench (pedestal) or down the seductive brass ‘S’ of a jazzy saxophone, there are few humans a-dwell upon this planet who can’t help but join in on the grinnin’ part of a wildly executed round of “Ol’ Joe Clark” or a three-chord trip to “Cripple Creek” rung from the strings of a banjo. You just can’t help yourself. You’ve got to smile.

Joy, you know.

“Do you know,” I asked the class of bright high school seniors, “Beethoven’s last word?” Of course none of them did. Some, I fear, didn’t even know who Beethoven was.

“It was, ‘DAMN!!’” I said with great emphasis. I told the class about what a bitter life Old Ludwig led: difficult childhood, broken heart, deafness and, for a finale, a raging death.

“But let me tell you, none of the sorrows of his life destroyed his art. His father beat him, the love of his life left him, and then in the meanest turn of fate, this great man of music went deaf and the direct link between his art and his world was forever severed. Oh, sadness. Just look at his face—a taut mask of misery. But never, for a moment, pity this wretched mortal.”

I picked up my banjo. “Ever heard his ‘Ode to Joy’? Just listen to his song. He could not have created such a song if he did not feel it.”

And then, plink-i-ty, plunk-i-ty, I began plucking the “Ode to Joy.” First slowly, then faster and faster with gathering energies, I starting singing—dum, dum, dum, dum, DUM, dum, dum, dum—and they, these sophisticated suburban children of affluence and apathy, with my exuberant encouragement, joined in and the room became a celebration and the banjo a wild engine of joy.

And, just as our classroom chorus approached a crescendo of hilarious song, with a resounding slap upon the drum of my banjo, I abruptly ceased our symphony and with angst-contorted face and clenched fist shaking at the heavens, I cried, “DAMN!”

Into the stillness of that shocked moment I pondered aloud, “I wonder, what was the meaning of Beethoven’s final profane exclamation?”

“Damn my life of abuse and the mad-cruel ironies of affliction.”

Or...

“DAMN! What will become of this song that yet sings in my heart?”

You decide. But know his art before you curse his life.

A few years ago when confronted with the likelihood of my death in an intensive care unit, my first reaction was a feeling of relief. Though it may not seem so to the casual observer of my life, it takes a great deal of effort to be me and the idea of taking a bit of a break seemed like an easy way out of finishing the toil of my mortal days. Like now, for instance. I love writing this book but, to be perfectly honest, it isn’t easy to come up with genuine cause for giddy good times in the world in which we all live. I will never intentionally deceive you, my friend. When I talk about happiness, it’s the real deal. And when I talk about reality, I pull no punches. (Just wait until you read my analysis of economic reality: life in a feedlot.)

So there I was, a drugged-up, hooked-up, sorry slab of human flesh languishing away what well could have been the final moments of a good sweet life. Out in the hall, medical people mumbled with my wife Carol, while as for me, initially—as awareness of my dire condition sank in—I was just kind of grinning at the thought of taking some time off. I had artistic visions I needed to carve in wood, songs I needed to record, books to write, and blessings to drum. Much to do, and all of it critical to my being and, hopefully, of use to as many others as reach would allow. Just like it is this early afternoon in late January, clicking words upon my laptop down at the local coffeehouse; except on that September morning three years ago, I was likely going to die from some mysterious growth on my spine and its gift of blood poisoning to the whole of my physical entity.

I thought: Okay.

Then, in a cold rush that struck me with sheer terror, the reality of my imminent demise hit home. My lovely wife Carol and incredible daughter Kristin would survive without me, but, Gods know, it wouldn’t be nearly so much fun for them. We sustain one another in a balance of need and love and power that would stumble with the loss of any of us. Mere survival isn’t the issue. Happiness is what matters in life—more than any other element of our package of physical identity, if you’re not happy, you’re just wasting precious time here, and likely daunting the joy of a circle of unfortunates in range of your effect.

If you are not a source of happiness to others, at least have the decency to shut the hell up.

This is a book about happiness—not as a mood, but as a critical attribute of being. This is not a sympathy card for our sniffled sorrows, this is a hard road to the bliss of facing difficult truths and still getting a kick out of life.

In that dim hospital room filled with beeping and hissing miracle medical machines, I was scared to death. No, I was scared of death. And that really troubled me.

Then Carol and Kristin and my sister Nancy came back into the room and made me laugh and I was really okay. I’ll tell you about it in the essay.

So, I’ll start this tour of glee with a chapter about fear. Fear is a real obstacle to good times. Fear is a necessary element of awareness in a big old scary world—it gives the edge we need to protect us from being gobbled up by hungry monsters and mugged by local thugs. Don’t give your fear up, just learn how to manage it and still have a good life

The causes of fear are real. And, as will be discussed in a chapter called “Dimensions,” there is more reality to emotion than to physical substance. Fear itself is real.

I’m not going to try to eliminate problems with ideas in this book. Problems are out there. Complications, pains, sorrows are never going to be blissfully banished. I’m just going to tell some stories, throw about some thoughts that may give insight to the skill of co-existing with difficulty.

For example, and I hope this doesn’t sound too tie-dyed and hippy-esque to be taken seriously, my solution to the paralyzing potential of fear can be summed up with three simple elements: laughter, hope, and beauty. Read on, friend. You’ll see.

Earlier, in the last hour of good light, on a short trek, Sampaio tapped a log with a stick and a spider as large as my hand and fingers rushed aggressively out of its hole and right into whatever lobe of the brain stores the stuff of nightmares. We whacked great leaves with our machetes and made our passageway back toward camp where Marcus was cooking dinner. Sampaio motioned for me to stop and he pointed to a mass of bloody fur and bone. “Jaguar,” he said. I nodded at the great cat’s recent feast and was glad when we pressed on. What had been dense became nearly impassible. There were webs and draping mosses in the trees. There was, ever in the intense heat and moisture, a tinge of rot to the air. I couldn’t see the birds. They did not sing, they screeched. I glanced behind and saw the vegetation had folded upon itself and erased all sign of our passing. When I looked back, Sampaio was gone.

I stood perfectly still, listening for my guide. I didn’t want to start calling out his name. Somehow, likely only in my mind, this all seemed like a test of the American tourist and I dearly did not want to fail. It was only moments, I know. But, my God, was I alone.

I have a decent sense of direction—in all my world travels I have only been truly lost in two cities: Brussels, Belgium, where logic and landmarks failed me in the labyrinthine turn of lanes and alleys; and Salinas, Kansas, where…Oh, never mind, I used to drink. A disquieting sense of disorientation had begun hours earlier when the three of us—Sampaio, the guide, Marcus, the boatman, and I, the damned fool who had paid a hundred dollars for an overnighter in the jungle—left the Amazonian eco-resort of Ariau in a power canoe and headed for solid ground. Ariau is built on pilings supporting platforms in the treetops. It was July, right at the end of rainy season and the catwalks between units were only a few feet off the river’s surface. In low water, we were told, it can be 50 or 60 feet down to water level. The Rio Negro is seven miles wide during high season. We were at least an hour, maybe two, crossing open channels and cutting through breaks in the flooded treetops and then up narrower and narrower watercourses where sometimes we would have to dislodge the canoe from the tangle. I had not the slightest notion of where we were. I was completely at the mercy of these strangers to whom I had been introduced at dockside. Stepping onto dry land did little to allay a sense of absolute dependence upon the skill and kindness of my new best friends. I couldn’t even ask for reassurance. Neither of them spoke English.

So there I was, so deep in the Brazilian Amazon that my karma couldn’t even find me and the little Ecuadorian Indian who had hewn a tunnel into this bio-diverse madness, pissed off a major arachnid, and rung the bell at the counter of the Jaguar Café, had disappeared into the fronds. I was right on the verge of failing this man-test for country, clan, and gender—not with just a howl for help but with a sit down, sob like a sister, cry for my mama—when Sampaio called my name.

“Robert!” he shouted.

I guessed he had just stepped behind the great green curtain of the Amazon to take a leak. Man, was it good to see him when he reappeared. I wondered, “Do guys in this culture hug each other?” But, then I noticed, he wasn’t smiling. He looked grave as he spoke the only English sentence I would ever hear him utter.

“Robert, we are lost.”

The nerves adjust to the moment; the soul bends the course of our existence.

Out there, alone in the South American wilds, I was afraid as in “uh-oh...what should I do?” But, also, I knew fear as in the archetypal, child-lost, vast cold void of humanity’s sense of the abandonment of the Gods.

Do you know what I mean? Sure you do.

When the City was brought down with the fallen towers of 9/11, the mayor, Rudolph Giuliani, stepped up and told us what to do with the fight-or-flight panic of our nation. He helped with the nation’s nerves.

When the rubble and the clouds of choking dust settled, the President told us to go shopping while the shadowy Machiavellians who actually ran the country began an ongoing manipulation of our primal fears to capitalize upon horror and chaos as assets of their power.

And, on the other end of the spectrum, Chicken-Little environmentalist have so exaggerated every man-made threat that now that the real thing is here with global warming nobody is listening.

And, of course, there is always the threat of either going to church or burning in Hell.

Regardless of motive, wielding fear as a political or religious bludgeon is obscene and, oh, so dangerous.

You see, fear is a real obstacle to joy.

But, we must accept that fear is crucial to our survival as fragile little creatures afoot upon a frightfully large and dangerous plane of existence. We are mortal and we are weaker than the average monkey; we taste delicious to bears, sharks, and ants—stripped of the artificial security of guns and insecticides and USDA-approved meat, we are fur-less, claw-less, fang-less animals with naught but our much-overrated intelligence to protect us from the hunger and territorial instincts of a plethora of much more able and well-adapted fellow beasts. Fear is the psycho-mechanism that exaggerates imagined threats and thereby keeps us alert to real dangers. It has a concrete purpose, even though, easily, ninety-percent baseless.

Children know about fear. Remember the ‘boogie man’? Closet monsters? Dust dragons under the bed? Remember how readily we can poke our eyes out with sticks and scissors? Fear is mighty in our mortal lives and, as children, we knew terror in shadow and myth by the loving and sadistic chiding of discipline. Think of baby’s first little prayer...and if I die before I wake... “Good night, sleep tight; don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Death? Insects? “Sleep well my child. And, speaking of bugs, look both ways before you cross the street or you’ll end up crushed like a cockroach.”

I have no idea.

But, I do have elements to add to my true story of fear in the jungle.

Elements of survival in the face of fear.

Lost.

Then, a gleam of light sparked from his deep brown eyes and he grinned. I feigned rage and then such a wonderful laugh we had. No common language or common culture but a universal understanding of fear, and Sampaio’s joke broke down barriers and made us friends in that understanding. Though, clearly, I had fallen fully for the standard tourist-in-the-jungle joke likely inflicted by guides since the first tour (“Adam,” spoke the voice of God as he showed his mud-and-blood creation around the Garden. “Adam, we are lost.”), I didn’t feel the least bit foolish.

It’s part of the package of curiosity and fear that is the perspective of humankind. We seek the jungle; we fear its lush danger. We seek discovery; we fear being lost. We crave the Love of Gods; we fear the rejection of Gods. It is a fragile balance we maintain between daring and dread: Fragile.

So, back to the jungle. We returned to camp where, upon a rotisserie fashioned from branches and twigs, Marcus cooked the juicy essence of meat to perfection. No, it wasn’t some eye-popped, victual of Amazonian rodent skewered a-writhe o’er the white heat of the campfire. It was chicken brought from the ample larder of the resort. Man, was it good, too. All a-drip and flavorful upon my chin and fingers. And there was plenty. We three human males gathered in ancient rite about the smoking core of light and heat as twilight faltered and failed and night engulfed us. Somehow, though we knew no bond of language, we managed to know together the joy of good food and easy laughter. I had joined whole-heartedly in setting up camp, carrying my share of the equipment and provisions, gathering firewood and hanging hammocks from trees. I hadn’t been some pampered white-guy bwana sitting back as the natives did all the work. And I had laughed at Sampaio’s terrible joke—a laugh of camaraderie and shameless admission of honest fear. It was a wonderful evening out there where nature, in all its vicious truth, suspended us in webs of primal danger and beauty. With machetes we had chopped an ample pile of dead wood, armed ourselves with powerful six-volt lanterns, and, after thorough dousings with DEET insect repellant, swung into hammocks and let the night have us.