David “Dave” John Zent
August 2, 1955 – October 31, 2021

David passed away October 31, 2021.

Dave is one of the best people we have ever known.

He lifted us up his whole life. He is a shining light.

Many thoughts and prayers to all his family, friends.

We love you David. Thank you.

– webmaster

David’s obituary
David John Zent

 

 

JUST A QUICK PLEA FOR PRAYER…

 

Today at noon I go back under Dr. Trang’s scalpel to complete some surgery that we missed last round. The pain of opening my eyes has been excruciating because of a drainage tube in a very bad place; I have been blind for two weeks and medication has been a necessity. I’ll be very glad to have that stop! My love and prayers to all. Catch you on the flip!

A KMC KINDA DAY!

I’m lying on a gurney in the surgical room at Kern Medical Center, naked except for this backless gown recently seen on the catwalk during fashion week.

You know the one. I look fabulous. High heels and a handbag complete my carefree look, with matching scarf and jewelry. Ahem.
Before they pitch me deep into the arms of Morpheus via anesthesia, I thought I’d post a pic of the little monster causing all the fuss. I’m leaving the hospital after surgery, but the little beast has been assigned to the hospital incinerator and will be sent to hell. 
Muhaha.

 

At any rate, surgery starts in about an hour and boy do I miss my morning coffee. That is okay, though, because I’m pretty sure coffee and anesthesia are sparring partners and I don’t really want to be wide awake and rarin’ to go during this operation. If I drank my normal dose I’d probably try to assist in my own surgery. I’d be good at it, too! I learned all the best techniques from watching the 3 Stooges!

Nurse, hand me that anesthesia mallet…

Catch you on the return trip! My love to The World in general, and YOU in particular.

OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY!

(But this thing in my eye is a goner…)

Well, hello there, strangers! It’s been quite some time since I have written of my adventures, but I assure you there have been a few good reasons.

First, however, I thought I’d post a Valentine video of my toothless acapella version of OUR LOVE IS HERE TO STAY (Facebook video link), a song first taught to me by the unmatchable Mary Osborn Scaffidi, one of the First Ladies of Jazz who actually lived here in Bakersfield, and who was an early mentor and musical light to me in my youth.

Happy Valentines Day, Mary, you are missed and loved, no matter where in the wide universe you are currently gigging…

I dedicate the sentiments in the song to all of my many loves on Facebook; to my exquisite daughters whose love makes up the core of my own heart; and to all who, by circumstance or choice, are alone on this loveliest of holidays.

I open my arms and heart to you and encourage you to spread your own love and kindness through a world currently in great need of your own light. SMOOCH!

And if you are uncertain of your ability to love, for whatever reason, maybe you can promise yourself, as I do on my bad days, to at least not bring any more pain, sorrow, or unkindness into this world, as far as you are able.

It’s an easy jump back to love from that basic position…

I guess I should mention I will need some love and prayers In my corner of the universe too, as tomorrow, I will undergo some pretty extensive surgery to remove this tumor from my right tear duct area and repair the damage with tissue lifted from my forehead and temple areas.

I’ve been trying to get them to trim down my big nose and stuff all THAT extra Daveness into the hole, but no luck so far…damn ethics…

The lump in the duct did indeed turn out to be cancer, although unrelated to my previous throat cancer.

The thing is about the size of a big grape at this point, and a perimeter around the area has to be removed as well, which necessitates plastic surgery reconstruction involving the bone in my nose to which the thing is attached, as well as parts of the eyelid and surrounding tissue.

To replace the bone in my nose, they will remove part of a rib and use that.

Oh boy! Sore ribs! My favorite…extra sauce, please…

But you all know I don’t ‘worry’ about this kind of thing anymore, since I gave up my atoms awhile back in order to be of some real use in what I perceive as God’s will for my life.

Anything that comes from this I regard as part of a better idea for my life and time than I could have hoped to come up with, so I’m good with it, no matter what.

You may, however, hear tales of some guy with long blonde hair tromping the streets of Bakersfield in his Phantom mask.

Yes, I kept the one from the last production in case something like this ever happened. And waddya know? I was right!

So I will be out of commission for a few more weeks; well, about two months, if you want to get technical.

I didn’t post much about it so it wouldn’t freak anyone out; also because I don’t think much about it, other than I’ll be glad it’s gone.

Then I can get rock ‘n rollin’ on helping my cousin again up north in Aptos, where I was sent during a truly crucial period in her life, and from which so much good has transpired simply because I said ‘yes’ when God whispered that I should go.

That is a B-I-I-I-I-I-I-G story, still playing out, and from which I have learned quite a number of useful lessons.

I am grateful for the opportunity, which above all has reacquainted me with a part of the family I cherish but from whom I have long been absent.

So that is the long and short of it, and when I can see again I will write more fully about my place in the Grand Scheme Of Things.

To sum up…
1. HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!
2. Hope you enjoy the song; I am grateful to have any kind of voice at all…
3. Surgery for the tumor in my eye is FEB. 15 at 7:30am, will take about 5 hours on the table, and 6-8 weeks recovery. 
4. If you have some extra prayer sittin’ around you’re not using, send it over to KMC for me tomorrow morning.
5. Things are going much better for my cousin and God’s fingerprints are all over that situation. 
6. I love you guys, and will remember my entire life the sweet sentiments and loving prayers lent me by so many hearts these last couple of years. I intend very soon to reciprocate

HOME FOR THE HOLIDAY!

Thanksgiving is my day.

Here I am back in Bakersfield, arriving from Hilo, Hawaii on a Quixotic (and more exactly, chaotic) journey only made possible through the kindness of a number of friends.

The emotions are nearly overpowering; chief among them is the gratitude I feel at the opportunity to be here again.

I’ve been in the jungle for six months, in very primitive conditions, and the prospect of actually sleeping mosquito-free on a mattress now has an allure comparable to ecstasy.

Even better, there are no roosters crowing the entire night long. God bless you, Zoning Laws.

Of course, I suppose all these powerful feelings are magnified by 3 hours sleep in two days, and all the crazy and wonderful things that happened on my way back home, most of which I’ll put down for you in a couple days.

I just can’t do it all justice today; I’m floating too high up to write coherently.

But in brief (well, for long-winded me, anyway):

I arrived mid-afternoon after catching the Amtrak bus in LA’s famous Union Station, sat with eyes glued to the window drinking in scenery I thought I might never again gaze upon, wheeled a hundred pounds of luggage onto the good ol’ GET bus when we hit Bakersfield, and then dragged it a mile or so up Union Ave. as cars honked every few minutes at the spectacle.

When I saw my childhood home, I promptly burst into tears.

It’s still there! I sighed my happiest sigh.

The anxiety I’d packed into my gut dissolved into an indescribable feeling of joy, and I knelt down and kissed the dusty driveway.

And wouldn’t you know it – Bakersfield dirt still tastes just like I remembered it.

Part of the emotional wallop is due to lack of rest, but more accurately, the opportunity to see my daughters again, on a holiday like this one, moves me beyond my capacity to express it. So the tears…

I’m here a little temporarily, for a few good reasons relating to family and health; if you’re reading this you may already know about the growth in my tear duct making life a little miserable.

Having survived a pretty stiff bout of throat cancer, I can’t ignore weird health issues that don’t resolve themselves, and the medical system on the Big Island is rural in its sophistication and difficult to navigate in a timely manner.

So I will ask my doctors Patel and Trang, two of the men who helped pull me away from certain death, to give me their informed opinions on what to do. Then I will soon travel to Northern California to help my beloved cousin Jan cope with the sudden death of Rich, her husband and friend of many years.

Rich suffered a massive heart attack at a sports event and slumped in the stands. Everyone thought he had fallen asleep. He had, however, taken the short way Home.

Rich was a musician, like me, and when he heard I had moved to Hawaii to recuperate, and had gone without a guitar, he sent one to me, a sweet little acoustic-electric that he packed with a bunch of strings and picks. When it arrived I sat and played it in the post office parking lot, weeping shamelessly.

I recently learned he was reading my posts out loud to friends and family. He got it. He WAS it.

Rich owned a Pet Shop/Feed Store, and was well-known for extending generous credit to folks with animals to feed and no ready cash to buy the feed with, and his death Saturday night was a genuine shock to his little community.

My cousin Jan is at a real loss, as she loved him so dearly, but the details of such a business are somewhat foreign to her.

She’s a jewelry and makeup artist of the highest caliber, so her understandings lie in quarters unrelated to hay cubes or rabbit pellets.

When I get there we will try to untangle the strands of his business affairs; as is often the case in sudden deaths, he died with a lot of important things he kept only in his memory.

Jan is raising a couple grand-kids that needed close attention, and Rich has been a great substitute dad to them. His absence is hard to take.

But today, I am headed on foot up the Panorama Bluffs to be Dad to my own grown daughters, most of whom are at home with their mom today; this is only possible because of the generous hearts of angels here on earth.

As I said at the top, Thanksgiving is my day. Sometimes I think I am the luckiest guy in the world, but I know that in reality, I have been the beneficiary of many loving hearts and remarkable kindness.

So Happy Thamksgiving to one and all, as I try to count my innumerable blessings, and contemplate how to best pass those blessings on to others. I’m pretty sure that’s what blessings are meant for.

You guys are my very real heroes, and I thank you from my soul for the happiness that is mine today as I walk the old familiar path to be with my family.

Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.

LET ME INTRODUCE MY STAPH…

 

This is ‘L’ week…laundry, library, and laying around lazily.

In other words, not much getting done, but I have a viable excuse.

I been sick!

In the jungle, there is no escape from bugs of every description, and I am the next best thing to a free buffet for them.

10-hour bug repellent lasts about 2 hours on me; after that, I become irresistible again to any biting insect in the vicinity.

I think there’s a contest on to see which of them can eat the most of me on any given day.

First prize winner gets the chance to fly up my nose and bite me on the septum…

About a week and a half ago, I woke up to large painful welts under both armpits which burned and itched magnificently.

Whatever bunked down for the night in Jungle Dave’s Underarm Motel not only trashed the room but left me a parting gift in the form of a staph infection.

I took pictures but they are too gruesome to post.

The glands under my left arm became the size of a small apple and a lovely shade of blood poisoning began to spread like wildfire from my pits to my parts.

Felt about like wildfire too.

Movement was a tad painful, and that ugly flu-like aching slowed me waaaaay down. I couldn’t lift anything with my arm and any action requiring both hands was excruciating. You know how a bad canker sore feels at just the wrong spot on your mouth? It was like that, only in my freakin’ armpit.

I have it under control now, but it’s been a week of amazing discomfort, even less fun than cancer was and conceivably more life-threatening because the distance from the infection to the heart is VERY short.

So I began taking two thousand mgs of Vitamin C every few hours, and started to apply a very potent vinegar a friend of ours makes, as a wound soak to disinfect and help cauterize the tissues.

In the meantime, I felt like I had been beaten with a bamboo cane, and exhibited all the energy of a sloth in the middle of hibernation season.

But the Vitamin C is doing its job fairly well, and has helped neutralize the poison from the wound while preventing the fever and dizziness that I’ve experienced before from blood poisoning.

The vinegar took the heat out of the glands and helped to release and drain the poison from the bites. Now THAT was gross.

Good vinegar is absolutely amazing in its medical usefulness; the stuff I used was distilled from banana tree vegetation and had a ‘mother’ the size of a small dog.

I mixed it with organic apple cider vinegar and the combined effects were salubrious.

(Sorry, I just always wanted to use the word salubrious, and since I am sitting in a library at the moment I figgered this was the time…)

So today, I am continuing my rehabilitation in the Hilo library, whose pleasures I used to take in when I lived here forty years ago.

This quiet little library looks basically identical to its younger self. And I mean, exactly the same down to its ‘government green’ paint color and pink/blue tiled ladies and mens restrooms.

The only changes I can detect have been the addition of a row of computers that occupy one row of study tables, and several bookshelves that hold the library’s DVD collection.

Other than that, the interior courtyard, its wonderfully-crafted koa-wood furniture, and the meticulous lawn and garden have been frozen in time, waiting for my return.

Sitting out in the courtyard is like being immersed in a framed painting of the world’s bluest sky and whitest, fluffiest clouds.

Completely relaxing, quieter than a church, and the only sound to be heard is the occasional librarian’s cart rolling down a distant linoleum aisle.

Ahhhhhh.

Libraries love me, and I always return the sentiment, if not the books…

I’ve always heard that if writers ever did bring their purloined books back that we’d have to build twice as many libraries to hold them all.

So I have actually been saving the taxpayers money! Um-hm.

Anyway…I am sitting here happily perusing the library’s magazine collection waiting for my laundry to dry and my armpits to unswell. Life is good.

And there you have an account of my most recent adventure; they are not always fun, but as long as I live to tell the tale, I am up for whatever is next.

My eye has not improved at this point but is not overly painful, although it weeps copiously and has swollen considerably. I will be seeing an ophthalmologist soon and may be heading for a little surgery.

But I fear nothing, and have learned to turn my worries over to my creator.

There is an old saying I like: ‘Don’t worry about things you can’t control, because if you can’t control them, why worry? And conversely, don’t worry about what you CAN control either, because if you have control, why worry?’

And that about sums up everything it’s possible to worry about…

Besides, MY friends know how to pray for me! And I for them.

Beats worry hands down.

Well, it’s nearly story time in the kid’s section, and that cute Polynesian librarian is going to be reading again, so I gotta go, but will write more after I find out who wins the big race – the Tortoise or the Hare.

The suspense is killing me!

ALOHA!

(Pics are Laundry and Shower Day…once a month whether I need it or not; also, a shot of the Blue Sky With Clouds from my corner perch at the Hilo Library Courtyard)

IN HONOR OF HALLOWEEN…

 

And at the urging of a few friends, here is the whole text of my short supernatural adventure:

THE WALKING TREES

(Told in two installments; maybe three, if I live through it…)

We had an energetic, even jittery full moon that night; I remember because it kept draping itself in rainclouds and disappearing behind their cover.

It reminded me of the way a cocaine addict disappears briefly into the bathroom at a party, then returns with a bright face, chemically aglow. You’ve seen that.

Crusoe and I had been swapping terrible jokes in his ramshackle bachelor shed and drinking ‘Natural Ice’, one of the shitty beers he likes because of it’s alcohol content and wonderfully affordable price – something like 36 cans for 5 bucks. The GOOD stuff.

Crusoe is my Hawaiian friend, a jack of all trades and master of his beer coozy. He is ostensibly a plumber, but can build, paint, design, lay block, and mechanic with skill.

He can also drink me under the koa-wood table.

Crusoe is a confirmed alcoholic. I, on the other hand, can catch a buzz just smelling cough syrup. (Vicks Formula 44…thanks, mom!)

But tonight, I had taken the plunge and joined him in his vice; soon there were only 24 beers left, then 20, and we got very loud, then very quiet.

It had been raining shards of glass on the tin roof above, or at least mimicked well the brittle sound of it; and since I had been trying to match Crusoe’s boozy pace, I felt the bravery of numbness rise up in my soul.

‘You’re DRUNK, you stinking Hawaiian!’

‘So are YOU, you dumbass haole!’

And we clanked cans together in a toast celebrating the drinking cultures of our disparate races. I saw an opening.

‘Tell me about the Walking Trees’, I demanded, and was startled to see Crusoe drop his nearly full can and turn as white as any haole.

He uttered an unreproducible epithet.

‘I can not say nothing about those sommabishes!’ he choked out in a harsh, unsteady whisper. ‘What if they hear? If I talk story ’bout da kine, they will kill me!’ and he retrieved the dropped beer, taking only seconds to make it disappear.

Three gulps! That’s championship skill, especially for beer that burns going down.

‘Wha..KILL you? What bullshit…’ I snorted as I likewise tried to guzzle my own horrid ration of Natty Ice, which by the fourth can tasted pretty…damn…swell!

Crusoe began cussing a blue streak in Hawaiian, and when he’d exhausted all those combinations began the process in pigeon English.

‘GahDAMBIT! Sommabish! Gahdambit sommabish!’

He likes all-purpose English cuss words especially; also another that I am too polite to assault your tender eyes with, but it rhymes with a popular brand of jelly, which with a name like that has GOT to be good…

I begged, cajoled and pleaded, as those three verbs are often seen in each other’s company; but he refused to talk anymore about local lore or Walking Trees, and instead walked to the door and pissed steadily into the rain.

I’d asked several other native Hawaiians about this same legend, and although the reactions weren’t nearly as vehement, they all became dark in the face with unspoken dread before hurrying off to gather fruit and weave hula skirts, or something.

I thought they maybe didn’t want to waste their aloha answering dumb questions from a clueless haole, but Crusoe had never behaved that way drunk or sober, except on this topic alone.

These Hawaiians were keeping a silence born of genuine fear!

Fear? Ha! Haoles know no fear, especially after chugging Natty Ice with abandon.

‘Woooo! WOOOOOO! I’m a Walking Haole Tree!’ I teased, stiff-legging my way around him like a zombie; and the next thing I knew I was out in the rain, my Frogg Togg poncho thrown after me with a flutter.

The rustic door slammed and a wooden latch drawn; I had been 86’d!

‘How about one for the road?’ I yelled at the screenless window, and a silver and blue can sailed through, missing his cat by the merest whisker but hitting me squarely in the groin.

‘SommaBISH!’ I hollered, dropping to my kneecaps in that most exquisite of all male pain onto the lava bubble in his garden.

I was getting the hang of cussing like a Hawaiian, even if they wouldn’t talk much to me. ‘GahDAMbit that hurts…’

I groggily gathered the few remaining grains of my haole wits, as well as the dented can of beer, and stumbled in the direction of Hoop House by the capricious light of a cocaine moon.

It was this way, right? Or maybe through those guavas. Or was it through the banana patch? The damn jungle all looked the same, courtesy of my unaccustomed boozing. Shit!

Shit shit shit shit shit!

Maybe if I just sit here until the beer finishes its route…and I plunked myself sloppily on a damp bed of moss.

It was soft, mooshy, and I remember thinking just before the moonlight switched itself off: I should cover my pallet bed in this lovely stuff…maybe have a shirt made of it too…and I passed out blind.

I was awakened by the kind of sound only the jungle makes when it talks, that swirling, grating, mysterious voice both undefinable and unlocatable, more moan than meaning; it was like someone trying to sing an aria with a throatful of wood.

At least that was my half-drunken impression…

I opened my eyes with some effort, and discovered that the world was upside down. I was hanging by my feet, a snakelike tendril of thick greenery lifting me high and tight some twenty feet into the air.

I screamed.

Repeatedly.

For gathered around me in tribe-like assembly were at least a hundred of the very trees that had caused my friend such incredible distress.

Yes, they had faces, eyeless; they had mouths too, but most definitely were not toothless.

If you’ve ever been fanged by the barbs on a bougenvilia, you know da kine…and the teeth glistened a blood red, five inches long.

The foliage atop them resembled the spiky hairdo of a particularly vicious variety of punk rocker, the kind who only jumps into mosh pits to cause pain; and all around the bottom of their trunks waved little animated root legs, writhing like a mass of large, hideous and greasy worms upon which the tree could locomote.

And though still sideways from the wooziness of mass-produced swill, I was sober enough to know I should be very, very frightened…and I was.

And still am.

For indeed, these were THE trees…the panic-inducing Walking Trees no Hawaiian could speak of…and I was held high in the moonlight, powerless in their grasp.

(The pic is one of the breed during the day…oh sure, they LOOK harmless enough, BUT…)

(Continued soon! Hopefully before they kill me!)

PART TWO: THE WALKING TREES

I am upside down twenty feet or more in the air in the deep Hawaiian jungle, on a night flooded by a nervous and full Hawaiian moon. My location at the moment is not exactly of my own choosing; heights bring out the coward in me, ever since a severe ear infection as a child.

I am instead held helplessly in the leafy grasp of some kind of snaking vine, commanded by a very tall and spiky tree able to move under it’s own volition.

And I am about to wet my pants.

The very tall and spiky tree moved toward me, undulating on row after row of worm-like tendrils until it was able to peer full into my nearly purple upside-down face.

‘I have to pee!’ I gasped aloud, hoping that a tree that can ambulate will also be able to understand plain English.

The oddest-sounding rustle struck up a presence in the air around me, something like a cross between sandpaper on wood and the sound a hyena makes, only lower in tone.

The tall spiky tree waved a branch and suddenly I felt myself falling, falling, falling; only to land in the well-muscled arms of a tall and regal warrior, nearly twice my size and weight, and made of spring steel to judge by how little effort he expended to catch me.

The odd rustling sound had dissolved into something at once humanly familiar: the roar of laughter!

And in the place of the army of Walking Trees, there stood a gathering of native Hawaiians, beautifully garbed in the costume of tribal antiquity.

The nervous night had magically become brilliant day, the shimmering blue of the endless Hawaiian sky shining all around us.

I was lowered to the ground gently by this mountain of a man, obviously the uncontested spokesman for all gathered behind him.

And behind me, I saw a pair of the warriors who had held me aloft in their own mighty grips, now grinning in that wide-open way that these beautiful people still do today.

‘Haole boy! Behind da kine!’, and the leader pointed to a nearby banana tree, whereupon I could release a little pressure from all the beer I’d guzzled with Crusoe, my Alcoholic Hawaiian pal.

The group thought this was pretty funny. I poked my head out, a little embarrassed, and they howled again. I finished my business and walked sheepishly back to the tribe.

I was met with broad smiles all around as I rejoined them, but I guarantee, I had no idea how to react, and was in the weirdest frame of mind of my entire life (not to mention a tad embarrassed…)

But somehow, the smiles and sweet round faces of this strange group put me at ease, and my fear became my fascination.

The day was completely glorious, the air the cleanest I’ve ever taken in, and the colors of the world had a radiance I’ve never seen in my day to day, except at the births of my five wonderful daughters…

I was in old, old, old Hawaii.

This HAD to be a dream! I bit my arm, and had the reaction you might expect when I drew a little blood.

Hurt like hell. I was conscious, all right.

I scanned my surroundings and immediately realized we were no longer in the deep jungle, but had somehow materialized on a long black sand beach fronting a wide, crescent bay.

There were ukuleles plunking some distance in the background, and calm, sweet harmonies followed its sound like ripples in gentle water.

That bay was something familiar…as was the river cascading into the left end of the bay…

Hilo! This was HILO!

I looked again in awe at the landscape around me, sure to a fault I was imagining this yet knowing in my heart that I was indeed seeing my town as it was at least two hundred years in the past.

There were no storefronts, no paved streets, no vehicles that resembled cars, certainly; in their place stood a variety of the old Hawaiian hales that were gorgeous in their simplicity and oneness with the natural world in which they stood.

I saw half-naked women, not only unashamed but likely unaware that it would never be possible to walk around modern Hilo so alluringly.

The men were full-muscled, black-maned specimens of all that is handsome, and they looked unstrained, intelligent, and happy.

My mouth must have dropped open in amazement, which I know because a curious bee flew in and I spit it rapidly out in a sputter of amazement and consternation.

This was again hilarious to the assemblage around me, their kind eyes and bright teeth sparkling in the sun. It made me want to laugh too, and somehow I found myself howling along with them, albeit with a tinge of hysteria.

I must have looked quite a strange fish to beach on the black sand shore, deeply puzzled as to what was happening, and why.

I again turned to the massive man who led them, mantled with a cape of glorious feathers expertly crafted from the most exotic plumage on the island.

His headdress added another foot to his stature, and I know I will never again meet anyone whose fitness for nobility rings as true.

‘Who ARE you?’ I pled, although inside I could already hear the name ringing in my ears.

The great man held out his arms in a gesture of natural power, spreading them wide to include the scope of the entire scene.

‘I am called Kamehameha, son of Pele, Goddess of these islands; and I am the eternal and anointed King of Hawaii!’

I suddenly had to pee again.

(PART THREE OF THE WALKING TREES, COMING UP SOON!)

PART THREE: THE WALKING TREES
(Final installment for now! But only Pele knows for sure…)

I was surrounded by the Hawaiians of old, to whom I must have seemed as curious as they did to me, and was standing on the bayfront of my beloved Hilo town as it was at least two hundred years in the past.

Their leader was the King of Hawaii, whose remains were never found; an ancient Kahuna had thrown them back into the womb of the volcano, but he now stood in magnificent flesh and bone not three feet from me.

Blood not only rushed to my head in the presence of Kamehameha the Ist…it took a jet.

Now, I’ve met all manner of great men, generals, presidents, prime ministers, top tier thinkers and entertainers, when I was performing at a large business conference a lawyer friend of mine organized each year in my hometown; I even sat the entire day with many of these leading lights in backstage trailers as we relaxed and waited our turns before the crowds. Because I like to ask questions and relate, I got to see into them a bit and examine them for the keys to their glories.

But Kamehameha…he was like a warship compared to their rowboats. If there truly is such a thing as natural royalty, then that quality radiated from this huge and powerful man unmistakeably, the living embodiment of charisma, unbounded energy, and perfect harmony of body, mind, and spirit.

His fitness for his position was a simple fact of nature, and my proximity to this legend made me a tad…bit…nervous.

So I had to process the rest of the beer I’d drunk.

‘King’, I began, and seeing the look of controlled strain on my face, he pointed back to the thicket of trees I had previously watered.

That particular clump of greenery still exists as a vigorous growth on the shore in Hilo to this very day! Well, it’s ancestor, perhaps. But you can thank me for fertilizing it…

And as if on cue, when I stepped back onto the sand, the entire village had come down to the bay, bearing a rainbow of glistening fruits, flowers, fish, and five very, very, VERY large wild pigs, trussed and succulently roasted in the old Hele fashion, a feast to end all feasts!

I was invited to sit with the King. Well, carried by two warriors and plopped on a mat next to him, anyway. How could I refuse?

At complete ease among his people, Kamehameha laughed and joked and teased, and I sat in a state of blissful delirium to find myself at table in the most improbable luau I could imagine. I consider it still the finest meal of my entire life…

Fire dancers began a performance of their ancient art, spinning flame and flesh into a whirlwind of impossible feats; half-naked Hula dancers accentuated the sensuality of the foods set before me, dish after colorful dish we ate with our bare hands; and as we ate to bursting, we were charmed by the serenades of gifted musicians and singers, who sang of the island’s beauties, and battles, and loves, and gods.

And at the close of a hymn to Pele, goddess and keeper of the flame in Hawaii, her son Kamehameha stood, his massive and muscled frame towering above us all as we sat on our grass mats in sublime expectation.

The players began a slow, languorous melody that angelic Hawaiian voices turned at once into five-part harmony, and over this haunting, luxurious background Kamehameha began to sing.

In clear, sweet baritone he sang of the aloha in his heart for each of his tribe and their families, of the promise that he would always safeguard his people, the sacred fishing and burial grounds they cherished, their ancient gods and ways.

The pureness of his voice seemed to penetrate the deepest part of my own soul.

At the close of this amazing song, those present stood and each took the hand of another until all were connected by touch.

I was dazzled by the smile and exotic beauty of the rather under-dressed wahine who had slipped her soft hand into my own; and maybe a little less taken with the towering warrior on the other side whose hand was so large it easily swallowed mine…but who’s complaining? The experience was so lyrically magical that it turns itself over and over in my heart to this day.

The entire tribe began a chant older than the islands, older than the ocean, perhaps older than time itself; and as their voices drifted into the heavens, a light rain began, soft as feathers, sweet as native honey, as though the very sky had embodied the spirit of aloha and sent this rain to kiss us.

And then, lightning!

The largest burst of jagged electricity I’ve ever seen hit the bay about a hundred yards from the shore, and the ocean filled itself with power, and began to move like a living thing, which of course it is.

But to my dismay it began climbing, a local tsunami climbing the beach where we stood as one being, hands clasped in unbreakable unity, and it rose and rose until it was to our waists, then our shoulders, until it at last reached over the heads of the tallest warriors, and finally Kamehameha himself.

No one had moved, flinched, cried out in distress. Indeed, no sign was given that it was anything less than the natural order of things!

I, on the other hand, was feeling a bit shaky about being drowned.

Although I have a Boy Scout Merit Badge for Wrestling and had practiced the sport of jui jitsu in my callow youth, I could not break free of the hands gripping mine. And as they were submerged, so was I. I resigned myself to imminent death.

But as the clear blue water topped my mouth, my nostrils, my eyes and hair, I found I could breathe with the same ease I could see through the ocean, which was brightly festooned with large schools of tropical fish of brilliant color, undulating and swirling in a mesmerizing dance under the waves.

Among them, I could swear I saw creatures described of old as Mermaids, atop swift dolphins and trailing lengths of long golden tresses in the wake of their movement.

Every conceivable color was embroidered into this underwater tapestry, a kaleidoscope of hue and shade and form that made me giddy with astonishment.

And as I watched, the entire submerged Hawaiian tribe began to change from the glorious and happy group with whom I had feasted into something strange, and dark, and terrible…

The water receded from the shores; and I was again transfixed as I witnessed, in
place of the tribe, the same number of shudder-inducing Walking Trees!

I glanced back at the peaceful little village of Hilo; and into the air it rose like mist, vanishing into a darkening sky which had suddenly threatened to storm.

I looked all around me on the sand. The sight of these hundreds of Walking Trees, dragging themselves slowly from the water up onto the shore, was both horrifying and wonderful.

They moved on legs that squirmed and wiggled, as unlike the beautiful people they had replaced as day is from night.

I started to feel dizzy, and a bit sick.

Then suddenly we were back in the jungle, where I had first encountered the Walking Trees in my half-drunken stumbling.

I was lifted again into the air, gently and upright this time, by living branches and vines that nevertheless held me helpless again.

The one I knew to be Kamehameha turned its great and terrible face to my own, and in the voice of a tree rasped this:

‘You have seen what we seem to be, and what we really are.

‘In this form we are safe, and from this heart of stealth and strength our people will again become great, and will reclaim the rule of our islands.

Here we keep every ancient custom and honor every god and goddess of Hawaii that the modern world has scorned. But they all shall arise again.

When there are finally enough of us to conquer, we will take back these islands and my mother, Pele, will cleanse all traces of the haole’s presence with fire.

This will remain our mystery, never to be spoken of, never to be revealed to the encroaching world. And you are one of the fortunate who have this forbidden knowledge. And a Haole, no less! But you will say nothing, or there will be consequences as my mother Pele has decreed…’

I could do nothing but furiously nod in agreement, but in mid-nod Kamehameha suddenly reached out a very sharp branch and I felt my side pierced through and through by its thrust.

I looked down and saw blood; not the crimson color I expected but a green that glowed and sparkled with the energy of magic.

And suddenly I was falling, down, down into the dark foliage, and lay on the wet moss unmoving…unconscious…

Something even wetter brought me to my senses; Crusoe stood above me pouring a can of Natural Ice over my head.

‘Hey, Dave! Stupid haole, you gonna fall into a puka and break something! Wake up, you sommabish! It’s too goddammbit wet to stay out here…’

And this time, for a change, it was Crusoe pulling ME up from the ground, and walking me back to reasonable shelter from the rain.

I never told him what I had seen, where I had been, who I had met. I don’t believe it myself, most of the time, and I have written it all out in spite of Kamehameha’s warning. I disregarded my promise of silence, as I have never taken orders from my dreams, no matter how magnificent.

And so the tale has been told.

But as I have written, my hands and arms have become strangely stiff, and just minutes ago, an aching in my elbow led me to find a small painful growth in the joint; green it was, and something that appears to me very like a leaf.

I dug it out with a penknife; a small trickle of blood spattered the paper. Green.

I am worried. Natural movement feels so suddenly difficult.

But I am strangely calm, as well.

My thoughts…become quite strange and slow…

My hair is spiky and fierce…

I begin to stretch my serpentine limbs and branches…

And I long for the companionship of other trees.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

---

Handy Links:
The Walking Trees – Part 1 
The Walking Trees – Part 2
The Walking Trees – Part 3

PART THREE: THE WALKING TREES

(Final installment for now! But only Pele knows for sure…)

I was surrounded by the Hawaiians of old, to whom I must have seemed as curious as they did to me, and was standing on the bayfront of my beloved Hilo town as it was at least two hundred years in the past.

Their leader was the King of Hawaii, whose remains were never found; an ancient Kahuna had thrown them back into the womb of the volcano, but he now stood in magnificent flesh and bone not three feet from me.

Blood not only rushed to my head in the presence of Kamehameha the Ist…it took a jet.

Now, I’ve met all manner of great men, generals, presidents, prime ministers, top tier thinkers and entertainers, when I was performing at a large business conference a lawyer friend of mine organized each year in my hometown; I even sat the entire day with many of these leading lights in backstage trailers as we relaxed and waited our turns before the crowds. Because I like to ask questions and relate, I got to see into them a bit and examine them for the keys to their glories.

But Kamehameha…he was like a warship compared to their rowboats. If there truly is such a thing as natural royalty, then that quality radiated from this huge and powerful man unmistakeably, the living embodiment of charisma, unbounded energy, and perfect harmony of body, mind, and spirit.

His fitness for his position was a simple fact of nature, and my proximity to this legend made me a tad…bit…nervous.

So I had to process the rest of the beer I’d drunk.

‘King’, I began, and seeing the look of controlled strain on my face, he pointed back to the thicket of trees I had previously watered.

That particular clump of greenery still exists as a vigorous growth on the shore in Hilo to this very day! Well, it’s ancestor, perhaps. But you can thank me for fertilizing it…

And as if on cue, when I stepped back onto the sand, the entire village had come down to the bay, bearing a rainbow of glistening fruits, flowers, fish, and five very, very, VERY large wild pigs, trussed and succulently roasted in the old Hele fashion, a feast to end all feasts!

I was invited to sit with the King. Well, carried by two warriors and plopped on a mat next to him, anyway. How could I refuse?

At complete ease among his people, Kamehameha laughed and joked and teased, and I sat in a state of blissful delirium to find myself at table in the most improbable luau I could imagine. I consider it still the finest meal of my entire life…

Fire dancers began a performance of their ancient art, spinning flame and flesh into a whirlwind of impossible feats; half-naked Hula dancers accentuated the sensuality of the foods set before me, dish after colorful dish we ate with our bare hands; and as we ate to bursting, we were charmed by the serenades of gifted musicians and singers, who sang of the island’s beauties, and battles, and loves, and gods.

And at the close of a hymn to Pele, goddess and keeper of the flame in Hawaii, her son Kamehameha stood, his massive and muscled frame towering above us all as we sat on our grass mats in sublime expectation.

The players began a slow, languorous melody that angelic Hawaiian voices turned at once into five-part harmony, and over this haunting, luxurious background Kamehameha began to sing.

In clear, sweet baritone he sang of the aloha in his heart for each of his tribe and their families, of the promise that he would always safeguard his people, the sacred fishing and burial grounds they cherished, their ancient gods and ways.

The pueness of his voice seemed to penetrate the deepest part of my own soul.

At the close of this amazing song, those present stood and each took the hand of another until all were connected by touch.

I was dazzled by the smile and exotic beauty of the rather under-dressed wahine who had slipped her soft hand into my own; and maybe a little less taken with the towering warrior on the other side whose hand was so large it easily swallowed mine…but who’s complaining? The experience was so lyrically magical that it turns itself over and over in my heart to this day.

The entire tribe began a chant older than the islands, older than the ocean, perhaps older than time itself; and as their voices drifted into the heavens, a light rain began, soft as feathers, sweet as native honey, as though the very sky had embodied the spirit of aloha and sent this rain to kiss us.

And then, lightning!

The largest burst of jagged electricity I’ve ever seen hit the bay about a hundred yards from the shore, and the ocean filled itself with power, and began to move like a living thing, which of course it is.

But to my dismay it began climbing, a local tsunami climbing the beach where we stood as one being, hands clasped in unbreakable unity, and it rose and rose until it was to our waists, then our shoulders, until it at last reached over the heads of the tallest warriors, and finally Kamehameha himself.

No one had moved, flinched, cried out in distress. Indeed, no sign was given that it was anything less than the natural order of things!

I, on the other hand, was feeling a bit shaky about being drowned.

Although I have a Boy Scout Merit Badge for Wrestling and had practiced the sport of jui jitsu in my callow youth, I could not break free of the hands gripping mine. And as they were submerged, so was I. I resigned myself to imminent death.

But as the clear blue water topped my mouth, my nostrils, my eyes and hair, I found I could breathe with the same ease I could see through the ocean, which was brightly festooned with large schools of tropical fish of brilliant color, undulating and swirling in a mesmerizing dance under the waves.

Among them, I could swear I saw creatures described of old as Mermaids, atop swift dolphins and trailing lengths of long golden tresses in the wake of their movement.

Every conceivable color was embroidered into this underwater tapestry, a kaleidoscope of hue and shade and form that made me giddy with astonishment.

And as I watched, the entire submerged Hawaiian tribe began to change from the glorious and happy group with whom I had feasted into something strange, and dark, and terrible…

The water receded from the shores; and I was again transfixed as I witnessed, in
place of the tribe, the same number of shudder-inducing Walking Trees!

I glanced back at the peaceful little village of Hilo; and into the air it rose like mist, vanishing into a darkening sky which had suddenly threatened to storm.

I looked all around me on the sand. The sight of these hundreds of Walking Trees, dragging themselves slowly from the water up onto the shore, was both horrifying and wonderful.

They moved on legs that squirmed and wiggled, as unlike the beautiful people they had replaced as day is from night.

I started to feel dizzy, and a bit sick.

Then suddenly we were back in the jungle, where I had first encountered the Walking Trees in my half-drunken stumbling.

I was lifted again into the air, gently and upright this time, by living branches and vines that nevertheless held me helpless again.

The one I knew to be Kamehameha turned its great and terrible face to my own, and in the voice of a tree rasped this:

‘You have seen what we seem to be, and what we really are.

‘In this form we are safe, and from this heart of stealth and strength our people will again become great, and will reclaim the rule of our islands.

Here we keep every ancient custom and honor every god and goddess of Hawaii that the modern world has scorned. But they all shall arise again.

When there are finally enough of us to conquer, we will take back these islands and my mother, Pele, will cleanse all traces of the haole’s presence with fire.

This will remain our mystery, never to be spoken of, never to be revealed to the encroaching world. And you are one of the fortunate who have this forbidden knowledge. And a Haole, no less! But you will say nothing, or there will be consequences as my mother Pele has decreed…’

I could do nothing but furiously nod in agreement, but in mid-nod Kamehameha suddenly reached out a very sharp branch and I felt my side pierced through and through by its thrust.

I looked down and saw blood; not the crimson color I expected but a green that glowed and sparkled with the energy of magic.

And suddenly I was falling, down, down into the dark foliage, and lay on the wet moss unmoving…unconscious…

Something even wetter brought me to my senses; Crusoe stood above me pouring a can of Natural Ice over my head.

‘Hey, Dave! Stupid haole, you gonna fall into a puka and break something! Wake up, you sommabish! It’s too goddammbit wet to stay out here…’

And this time, for a change, it was Crusoe pulling ME up from the ground, and walking me back to reasonable shelter from the rain.

I never told him what I had seen, where I had been, who I had met. I don’t believe it myself, most of the time, and I have written it all out in spite of Kamehameha’s warning. I disregarded my promise of silence, as I have never taken orders from my dreams, no matter how magnificent.

And so the tale has been told.

But as I have written, my hands and arms have become strangely stiff, and just minutes ago, an aching in my elbow led me to find a small painful growth in the joint; green it was, and something that appears to me very like a leaf.

I dug it out with a penknife; a small trickle of blood spattered the paper. Green.

I am worried. Natural movement feels so suddenly difficult.

But I am strangely calm, as well.

My thoughts…become quite strange and slow…

My hair is spiky and fierce…

I begin to stretch my serpentine limbs and branches…

And I long for the companionship of other trees.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

---

Handy Links:
The Walking Trees – Part 1 
The Walking Trees – Part 2
The Walking Trees – All 3 Parts Combined

FORCE OF NATURE

 

Yesterday I wrote a bit on the importance of the sound of rain as a kind of mental harbor from the storms of cancer treatment.

Funny, but last night we had an actual storm tear up a bunch of the land and shelter here on the Organic Egg Ranch.

It began in the eeriest way: as I stood at my little red campstove chef-ing a sumptuous repast of over-easy eggs and avocado (hey, it’s all we have at the moment; could be worse!) I looked out onto a landscape filling itself with tendrils of fog.

This fog looks little like the stuff that occurs in Bako; instead it has a strange, amorphous quality that makes it seem a living thing seeking prey. Creepy as all get-out! Of course, it could have been just regular ol’ fog trying on its Halloween costume, but I have my doubts…

So I flipped my egg and watched the fog as it swirled its way through the homestead; flipped another as a sound I’ve never heard in the jungle began, something like a jet plane flying very, very low; and by the time I’d flipped the third and last egg (cholesterol be damned!) the sound was directly on top of Hoop House and was accompanied by bolts of lightning hitting the jungle floor nearby!

Hoop House began to blow up like a balloon and for the next eight hours it was touch and go as my happy little home tried to choose between a career as a kite or a shelter for a moron.

I had not been expecting a storm of this magnitude, and had not properly guyed the structure to its base; nor had I completed the internal bracing that seemed so unnecessary in the pleasant weather we had enjoyed so far.

The rain hit a few minutes later, dropping in sheets that came in at an angle, drenching me inside and getting my avocado wet. The nerve! It also diluted my hot sauce.

My phone rang, and it turned out to be a message from the weather service warning of severe flash floods, death, destruction, and chaos. Typical government message, I suppose.

As I read it, the wind hit so suddenly and with such ferocity that everything on my admittedly underbuilt kitchen counter flew onto the floor and started to roll off the platform.

I think I may have invented some new swear words, but that’s okay, language is a living thing…

As fast as I could pick stuff up, this devil wind blew it all back off again, while simultaneously lifting my little Hoop House up from its moorings in order to abscond with it.

I jumped up and grabbed the center crosspole, and 140 pounds of Jungle Dave wrestled it back to its position. That ‘jet engine’ sound, the wind racing through the jungle at hypersonic speed, began in earnest and I held onto the crosspole in more than a little terror.

I imagined how the citizens of Puerto Rico felt and hoped we wouldn’t find ourselves in the same moat, so disorienting was the strength of the assault and its attendant racket.

After about an hour of this, the gale subsided and I came up with a contingency…

Under my bunk, I keep quite a length of a type of fishing line used for dragging the bottom of the ocean, extremely strong and useful for many farm tasks.

I began rapidly cutting lengths that I could use to tightly secure the tarp and rafters before the wind hit again, and in spider-like fashion wove a web all around the tarp to hitch to every available mount.

I found another couple lengths of PVC pipe and lashed them lengthwise across each side of Hoop House, found several spring clips that were strong enough to hold the tarp tightly to the bones of the structure, and picked up everything the wind had scattered in my path.

Then I sat down to eat my eggs and avocado, dammit.

It wasn’t long before the storm hit again with gale force, but I had done my repairs well and Hoop House weathered the assault like the tight ship she is now.

Several trees and unsheltered items did not fare so admirably, however, and we will be walking the property with a chain saw to clear the paths they are now blocking.

I spent the night with one eye open to make sure I still had a roof over me. The storm finally blew itself moribund after 8am this morning.

There’s not a lot of wiggle room living this close to the elements, so you can bet Hoop House is getting the structural improvement today needed to keep it from becoming a flying fortress.

We also are missing a rooster, blown to parts unknown as though he was Dorothy Gale from Kansas in The Wizard Of Oz.

We don’t want the little bastard back, so if you find him, he’s YOUR alarm clock now. 

He goes off pretty much every hour. Enjoy!

And in the words of Dorothy herself in the final frames of the famous film:

“There’s no place like a quiet home!”

Or words to that effect.

The Great Oz has spoken! 

(The pic is me sitting in dry storage, about to guzzle my much-needed coffee in peace…)

FIRE IN THE SKY
FIRE IN THE BELLY

 

The night sky in my jungle is on fire.

Someone, probably my old friend God, has strewn a galleon’s-worth of diamonds over the sea of black velvet above me.

The effect is dazzling, even startling; and I am mesmerized even though the light is so bright and sharp that it is painful in it’s intensity.

But I simply can’t take my eyes off of it. There in the Hawaiian heavens is every constellation, planet and star that I had always heard about but had never seen any too clearly in my hometown.

Unless I was at the BC Planetarium, anyway…

In Kern County, the air gets so thick with particulates that the moon often appears to be light brown with a gold tinge – pretty enough sometimes, but also a reminder of what I was breathing every day, of why I had asthma and fatigue for so many years, of the pollutants that likely contributed to the throat cancer I finally vanquished with the help of my creator, my doctors, and my beloved friends.

Today I started thinking about some of the things I did to soothe the whine-iness of my a-feared little brain, which often seemed to take on the character of the flighty, frightened slavegirl Prissy, who attended Miss Scarlett in The film Gone With The Wind: ‘I don’t know nuthin’ about beatin’ no cancer, Miss Scarlett!’

And since this is territory I have mapped now to a certain degree, I thought I’d put down a few suggestions in case you too get too frightened to think.

I used sound quite a bit. And the sound I used most was that of soothing rainfall, of which I have several recordings, all gotten free on the internet.

In fact, on YouTube there are hours worth of various storms, some featuring gentle thunder and lightning, or the ambience of rainforests, or rain with music.

This one sound is probably most responsible for a type of mental sanctuary that helped me escape the frequently overbearing pain and anxiety that accompanied my illness.

If I couldn’t dissipate it by putting all my attention directly on the signal of pain, as I often did, then I would put on my headphones with the sound of a gentle storm, and the little complainer in my head would become charmed and forget to raise the alarm, leaving me in a state of peace.

And peace is healing on rollerskates!

I sometimes would leave the sound of rain playing all day long, especially in the hot Bakersfield summers (which tended to make me wonder if I did something so terrible in a past life that God found it necessary to give me a little taste of Hell as a reminder to straighten up this time…).

So, rain sounds!

Also, I listened to the most soothing classical music I could find, both instrumental and choral, also widely available on the internet for free.

In fact, I often played both rain and music at the same time with good result, especially at night when I felt most alone and vulnerable.

I hauled out my favorite albums from high school, from college, from my days of playing in clubs and bars.

I listened to Joni Mitchell, Paul Simon, Elton John, Neil Young, Crosby Stills & Nash, the Beatles, any artist or band who had awakened the desire to make my own music too, anyone who had inspired me to think about the quality of my lyrics or the resonance of my own singing voice.

The word ‘inspiration’ means to be filled with the spirit of God in the present moment, so how could I go wrong?

Doing so brought back memories of youth, strength, romance, ambition, excitement, passion, and acted as motivation to move physically and to be that young healthy man once again in every way possible.

It helped activate my mental screen and imagination, upon which the body relies for direction.

It has been shown in modern studies that the body reacts the same way, in terms of it’s chemical responses, to both real life and imagination; it doesn’t know the difference and so produces the same biological responses either way.

This is incredibly useful!

And as I listened, I would search my memory for those times in my life I felt at my physical and mental peak; and indeed could remember many of those instances, which I then basked in for as long as possible to show my entire being what I was aiming for.

I think it added a necessary component to the process of defeating and recuperating from stage four throat cancer. I can even sing again, and am at about 85% of my former vocal capacity when I’m rested and hydrated.

Sound.

As in Amazing Grace
How Sweet The Sound
That Saved A Wretch Like Me!

It was as though the Holy Spirit had reached my innermost Dave to help awaken my health through my ears, and I thank God for the sounds in which I found healing, for they are part of the voice of God. We have only to recognize it.

And I’m sure these tools are yours as well, in case you forgot they are available.

God loves you; he did not make you sick but made you perfect, no matter what your fear tells you.

Dismantle those fears and become powerful! This is how you take part in your own healing.

I have to go build stuff for the Organic Egg Farm today, but as I do I will be ransacking my memory for other effective little tricks that helped me regain a semblance of my old, stronger self.

Don’t take illness lying down!

Because if you push back harder on illness than it pushes you…you will win.

Every blessing for the week ahead, my loves