Hau`oli Makahiki Hou!

2009...

DO YOU BELIEVE IT?





"O'er the ramparts we watch'd, were so gallantly streaming? And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air, Gave proof thro' the night that WAIKIKI was still there."

New Year's Eve...

more than six decades later.

Being the old coot that I am rapidly becoming, I faded around 10:30 P.M. with the sweet mele that is Waikiki Beach exploding in the background, nonstop since about eight o'clock. I suddenly woke up around twenty minutes before the bewitching hour, for some unknown reason, the pyrotechnics still raging. Hit the lua, hit the lanai, grabbed some Lipton Diet Green Tea and watched the local scene, immediately around me, mauka of the Banyan Hotel and Prince Kuhio and watched the reflection of the pro and non-pro show at the beach about a block away, being able to see only reflections in the overcast sky. It had been raining for hours but had stopped, which kept the black powder and heavy metals used for colors somewhat at bay. At about 11:48 P.M. there was a cease fire while people got ready for the bewitching hour. Grabbed an apple banana and some soy milk and waited for the midnight morass, nodding in and out in a dream-like sleep, in my beach chair.


The finale came with a thunderous bang, definitely not a wimpy whimper. Every corner, every vacant lot (Yeah, we still have a few), every green zone and failed 1980s construction project and of course the beach exploded nonstop for forty minutes. Whoops, hollars, screams and paroxims of delight cut through the war-zone like din.









These will be interesting times. The Iraq debacle, the greedy Wall Street shysters who fuc..d up our ecomomy, the crooked car barons who have taken taxpayer dough just to try and beat the foreign competion who, by the way, is kicking our collective manufacturing asses and a new president who seems to part Regan, part Abraham Lincoln, part YouTube, and arguably a visionary who could possibly turn out to be one of the most important statesmen ever to hold our sacred office, who promises to pull us out of the muck and mud created by Bush, Cheeney and their gang of thieves. It is a scary time. It is a hopeful time. And, it's about damn time!
Aloha nui loa to you all. Two-Thousand Nine is yours and mine... let's work to make it the paradigm shift that it portends to be and may each and every one of us do his or her part to regain America's honor and respect in the world. We've got a shot. Let's take it.
---Da Fish

Blogs ain't just for bitchin'

Been on a roll this year and I knew it was too good to be true... had a health problem that set me on my ass. I could spend pages bitchin' but I won't. Blogs are for more than whinning. Got a new pic of my grandson, Max. As soon as I scan it, I'll post it... man, he's growin' like a weed. Wait 'till you see the little nipper.
Aloha,
Da Fish

(Photo: Me and my Mom, Hilo Airport, circa 1949)

First day of the new year. Lucky 2008 will be GREAT!

Aloha No!

First, a little background. Here in the Hawaiian Islands we have experienced a drought that lasted nearly eight years. Something to do with El Nino and the change now to La Nina. It made our winters wetter, more like the way it normally is, but we got so used a true "Endless Summer" that people have become disoriented, confused and downright depressed. The weather broke somewhere around 2004 and that year we had one run of 44 straight days of rain. Folks went buggy. S.A.D.s abounded (Seasonal Affective Disorder). Locals bought down jackets, started sleeping in sweats and wool socks and basically freaked out. As what I will call the "Seattle Syndrome" set in, prescriptions of Atavan, Valium and Prozac were on the rise. Recently, a friend of mine even bought a small electric heater. Our range of weather, at least here on the leward side of Oahu (Waikiki side) ran from gray to cloudy and drizzle to full on tropical downpours to gale-force winds and back to more gray, rain, clouds, wind... well, you get the picture.

Now I can just hear you saying, "Yeah, yeah, poor people had to endure 60 degree weather. What's that? It got down to 58 degrees a couple of times? Wow, call out the sled dogs and rescue teams... and don't forget the rum!" But relativity is on our side and believe me when I say that the past four years have been a flat, friggin' freezin bummer. Not today, however.

The sun actually appeared. The beach was so packed with visitors that the locals couldn't even find a few grains of sand to lie on---and it was toasty warm. Here, see for yourself: http://www.wunderground.com/US/HI and http://www.usatoday.com/weather/forecast/us-states/hawaii-index.htm

Anyhoos, I kinda sorta beleive that there is some cosmic connection between what you do on the first day of a new year and how the rest of the year may (or may not) play itself out.

About a block-and-a-half away from the tiny little sixth-floor box w/ bed that tries to pass itself off as an "apartment" is Kuhio Beach, groud zero for the epicenter that is Waikiki. I made it straight to the public surfboard lockers where my board is stored. It was sunny for reals, albeit windy so I also brough along my wetsuit (that's right, you heard me correctly) that my good buddy Wayne brought me all the way from O'Neils in Santa Cruz, California, the last time he visited. I reacquainted myself with my trusty 11'6" China Surfboards single-fin ripper. It was one of China's old personal boards that somehow I was lucky enough to snag a million years ago. I was ready to paddle out.

As I said earlier, there was nothing but visitors at he beach but I did manage to run into one of my road dogs, Hippy James. I talked him into paddling out wwith me to talk to the turtles. "Going to Church" we call it. The South Shore was basically flat and we got caught in the big lull that happens in the middle of a tide change, but no matter---it was glorious. The water seemed like ice and there was a chill wind blowing out of the North West, somewhere around 9 mph (14 kph).

O.k, o.k.---we are as spoiled as hell---no bout a dout it. But the important lesson here is, as Robert Bly says, "Follow your Bliss." I sincerely hope your day was fantastic too... and that your year turns out the same. Aloha.

A Clean Slate in 2008!

Happy New Year, BloggerNation!

Finally back from the dead. Six Months of Chemo, six months of recovery and "IT" came back. No stronger. Just the same. Been on what they call "maintenance" treatment once a week for the last two years. At least it's keeping my liver from falling out. (Long story... we'll catch up, I promise!) http://www.drugs.com/mtm/peginterferon-alfa-2a.html ----if ya wants ta know more.

It's so good to be back! The new "Google Account" b.s. is so simple that it really confuses stupid people like me. Spent hours trying to find myself (This old Blog) while creating new ones and then I saw it: A little box that said "You must accept Terms of Service." All I can say is D-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-h-h-h-h-h-h.

Oh, yeah... 2007 was the 40th anniversary of the Human Be-In, the first "Gathering of the Tribes" in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco in 1967. Can you find a young Fish on this page? (Hint: The really little guy is Max, my Grandson).

Have a safe beginning to the year and it is trully great to "see" you again.

P.S. If I am lucky enough to get a comment from you, please don't make it so mysterious... tell me about YOU!

Aloha for now...

Da Fish

Another One Gone...

Jimmy "Big Jim" Dias went maki. I was there.
It was a beautiful death... and what a party: Choke grinds, kanikapila, much aloha. More soon...







Aloha,
Da Fish

A Good Death

I spent 5 weeks visiting my old high-school chum and longtime friend Jimmy Dias in the hospital. After a month, they told him he would have to spend at least two months or longer in a nursing home. He couldn't even feed himself. His stomach ruptured to to an ulcerated lesion and they had to remove much of it. His left leg became swollen and infected because of his diabetes and his heart problems. Toward the end of a month, Jimmy became very despondent. He knew he wouldn't make it and told every nurse and the few friends that came to visit that he was born in Queen's Hospital and he would die there. He just gave up. I was with him almost everyday and then he had a cardiac arrest.
He was in a coma for several days but no one found him when his heart stopped (he was in the damn hospital) and may have been ignored for as long as 32 minutes. He never fully regained consciousness although we had a few days where he shook his head "yes" and "no" and even kinda smiled once. His eyes were vacuous but once or twice he focused on friends and family for a fraction of a second. We like to believe he knew he was not alone.

I had left my number on his bulletin board as I was his only contact person. His family didn't even know he was ill. But then, the coconut wireless began to work and work well. One by one many of his 10 siblings heard about his condition and began to show up. Dozens of Nieces and Nephews and their children came. I was taken in to their O`hana as one of their own. I even got to voice my opinion, based on conversations Jimmy and I had had the previous 4 weeks, as to his wishes.

On Sunday, October 2, the birthday of his only son, life support was disconnected. More than 60 relatives and dozens of children were there, in the waiting room, eating a huge Pot-Luck meal and telling stories of remembrance. At any given time there were15-20 of us in his room with him. The nurse was in about every 15 minutes with another injection of morphine to make him comfortable. His breathing slowed to about once a minute and at any sign of thrashing around or discomfort, the nurse was there with another shot. Jimmy opened his eyes for the first time in three days, just for a few seconds and looked around the room. I told him that "Everyone was there. He wasn't alone." About 10 family members sang songs in Hawaiian for about a half an hour and people were constantly in and out from the feast at the courtyard to pay their last respects. At 2:25 p.m. on October 2, 2005, Jimmy was pronounced dead. People lingered for several hours and came in to talk to him. It was one of the most beautifully profound experiences of my life.
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One more time...

The other night, while on my way home from The Palace I was crusing up King St. on my moped, which is more fun than a sack full of snakes at a Saturday Night revival... all was right with the world. The heavily-mufflered new cars hardly wispered as my `ped buzzed briskly, neon lights on store signs hummed louder. We had the green. Less than 50 feet from the intersection a full-sized pick-up ran a red light, center punching a late-model mini-van. He hit the van so hard that it spun 360 degrees plus a few and came to a stop heading in almost the same direction. Glass splinter chrome trim flying metal crunching loudness broke the thick Honolulu night-air silence. The guy in the truck went right through the intersection and slammed into a parked car on the right-hand side of street. The rest of us just rode through, as though nothing happened. No braking, no swerving, just all heads turned in horror looking at the wreckage that in another instant could have been us. I had escaped one more time.

But for what? Tonight, Dylan's words played in my brain: "... you did the bump and grind in your time, didn't you? You used to laugh at everybody that was hangin' out... now you don't talk so loud, now you don't feel so proud..." I swear he wrote those words for me.

Dear Ray...

Ray is fine. They installed a pacemaker with a built-in defib. He'll be out of the water for two months but promises to be surfing again shortly therafter. Sorry I have been neglecting the blogisphere.

The horror of reality...

I'd forgotten something and walked the two blocks back down to Kuhio Beach. I noticed the full monty of rescue vehicles in front of the Waikiki Police Station and the racks... where we all hang out. Half way there another surfer stopped me and told me that Tania's father, Ray had had a heart attack. I figured he was at the hospital already.

Turning the corner at the public surfboard racks, I saw about 20 police, firemen and emergency personel. As I got closer Ray was lying on the ground. They had put some sort of padded tarp on the ground but he was down. Four or five people were working on him, yelling, "Ray? C'mon, Ray. Ray, Ray." He had been receiving CPR and had been defibed and they continued doing what they do. Finally, there was a pulse. They stuck a tube in his mouth, lifted him up a few inches and slid the stretcher under him. Over his head they fitted a neck brace and began strapping and buckling and securing him. He had an IV as well. Man. You see it in the movies and sometimes, driving by the scene of an accident but to actually be there, when it's a friend. Man. They finally moved Ray to the ambulance and allowed his daughter to ride along. They worked on him for awhile in the ambulance as well.

Ray usually hits the beach about 11:00 a.m. He has to take care of his wife who has advanced Alzheimer’s in the early morning. He meets his daughter Tania who works at a nearby Waikiki hotel every day and they surf together. Ray is in his 70s. Our prayers are with you, Ray.

Live every day like it's your last... it very well could be.