I take the slow, lazy drive up the mountain side watching the outside thermometer reading drop from the 70s to 50s. I am prepared, however. Snow pants. Check. Long sleeved cotton shirt. Check. Winter jacket. Check. Wool cap. Check. Camera. Double check.

I arrive at the summit eager for some pictures. My right forefinger twitch in anticipation. This is a going to be a great day. At 13756 feet above sea level, my lungs and my heart cry for mercy. This is weird. Never happened to me before. My fingers turn quite pale with a bluish tinge that make my eyebrows knit together. What is up with that? Don’t remember that happening last time. But onwards I go.

So, fast forwarding: summit, pictures, hike, more pictures, hike, pictures, pant like a dog in heat, get back in car, descend to go back to Highway 200.

SCREECH!!!! Stop!!! On the way down, I see a dirt road. I wonder where that goes? I take the turn. I’ve got 4Wheel Drive. Let any road stop me. I can feel the adrenaline surge through me. The bumpier the ride, the more exhilarated I felt. I explore the uneven, sandy dirt road and my spirits are soaring. I feel alive and full of energy . . .  then . .  I hear my back tires spin. I back up and try again. No good. Tires are still spinning. Uh-oh. Soft sand. The harder I tried to get out, the more mired I got myself.

<sigh> I’m going to have to call for help. Quick survival check: Excellent phone signal. YES!!!! Usually when I get myself in a similar situation, I don’t have cell signal. Ok. Temperature outside: 52 degrees F. 3:30 in the afternoon, lots of sun yet and a few hours of daylight. Good. Water? plenty. Food? two large bananas and lots of organic peanut butter.

Who to call? Who to call? Don’t really want to call 911. Not a life-threatening scenario here. Ah, yes, the mountain rangers. Ah, no. Got voicemail. Searching on iPhone . . . . . . . . . police department . . . . . . . . . there it is. So, I speak to the police dispatcher, sheepishly explaining my predicament. She calls the park center who calls the rangers who calls 911 to get the fire department. Ugh! This is embarassing!

I exchange several phone calls with the Waikoloa Fire Department dispatcher giving as much information as I could, although, “no idea” and “somewhere in the middle of nowhere on some dirt road” pretty much sums up what I know. It has been two hours since I first talked to someone to get help. A brush truck has been sent out and full rescue operations are in progress. Someone was out looking for me. So, I wait.

Several more phone calls with the fire department ensue and another hour and a half goes by. It is dark now. I hear the night sounds of nature around me. I ate a banana, a cup of peanut butter, I think, kill zombies with my phone, defeat evil, hugging bears, take sunset pictures, listen to rustling leaves and strange animal ululations, and watch as the sky turns yellow to bright orange to splashes of red, then very dark blue. The stars twinkle brightly at me as I waited for the brush truck.

Then in the distance, I see flashing lights, so I flash my headlights and honk my horn. YES!!! Help is here! The firemen look at my truck and look at where I’m hopelessly buried in the sand. They asked me if my truck is in four-wheel drive and I confidently say, ‘yeah, pretty sure.’ So, they proceeded to do what they do best. They attached their winch to my truck and pulled but because of the position of my truck and not much space to hold mine and theirs, they stopped halfway up the hill and attempted to drive my poor FJ cruiser out of the sand. No go. The tires spin some more and it doesn’t go anywhere. <sigh> They reposition their truck and tried again. Still no luck. Another repositioning . . .  and, uh oh, the winch is broken. So now, we are waiting for another unit to come out. Well, at least, the company is good. Both of them give me a lecture on going out on an adventure by myself and should get better off-road tires and how the FJ can’t be a true 4Wheel Drive. <sigh again>

One of the firemen got in the driver’s seat and says, what is this? Pointing to a smaller shifter below my radio. I said, it’s the shifter for the 4Wheel drive. You’re sure it’s in 4Wheel Drive? Again, I said, yes. Then he said, let me try something; then he shifts, some warning light comes on the dashboard, and he drives my truck out of the sandy hole it was in and into the road.

Yeah . . . imagine my chagrin . . . hmmmm . . . . how did I make it up that 25% incline of a hill in Waipio Valley and not die?? How did I not get stuck in the river? I drove through all that jungle thinking I was in 4Wheel Drive the entire time. My guardian angel must be worn out every day. <grinning sheepishly>

Sorry . . .

Not too much longer now and the dawn will break.

The sun will stream through the thin slits of the overlapping window blinds.

I have lain awake for hours, sometimes with eyes closed, sometimes staring into the darkness.

Sometimes, I stare at the little blue light of my computer and, in a fugue, wonder what cyberdreams are swimming in its memory.

Random thoughts, memories, feelings, images, and sounds occur in flashes in my brain – some remain to be recognizable, some flit in and out giving a vague familiarity but not certainty of what they are.

In this lonely hour, I chase after you.

I wish for you.

I long for you to engulf me.

Take me somewhere and out of this reality even just for a short while.

Surround me and take me into intangible darkness and let my corporeal self melt into you and make me ethereal.

The harder I chase after you, the more elusive you are.

Aaah!! This is madness!

The thoughts that run through my head are making me sad somehow.

Or perhaps lonely.

Or are they just the manifestations of the release of chemicals and firing of neurons that have reached a point beyond exhaustion?

I sigh with surrender.

Please, I beg you!

Take me before dawn comes.

Why are you so elusive?

Please, Mr. Sandman, sprinkle your dust on me . . .

Sleep . . . come take me . . .

The night is punctuated with sounds that lend serenity to a moment that I can capture so perfectly only in my mind. The whispering sound of water moving is broken occasionally by the crashing of waves on the rocks below.

I watch as the waves batter the rocks and create large tendrils of white droplets that jump in the air; then creating white foam that surround the rocks ,gently caressing them, then flowing back softly, slowly.

The night is cool with just the perfect amount of humidity. The ambiance is soothing, soft, mellow . . .
The night is lit by the soft glow of candles and the dancing flames of the tiki torches from the restaurant next door.

I pick up my wine glass and let the smell daze me for a second, then I take a sip slowly savoring the flavors that roll around my taste buds.

The smell of the ocean bathes my senses and I close my eyes for a few moments - listening, smelling, feeling . . .

My whole being feels cleansed . . . my soul purified . . . I feel in harmony with the world, this world . . .

This is God’s perfection and I am blessed to be in it.

The night is quiet save the chirping of crickets outside. I close my eyes to listen. Minutes later, I hear the gentle fall of rain on the grass outside. There is something so serene about that sound. The soft pattering, a susuration in the air. I let the sounds of the early morning whisper to me. The sounds, I hope, would lull me back to sleep. Listening, I tried to picture ocean waves crashing onto white sand . . .

Instead, images of golden brown stalks in my grandmother's rice fields emerge in the random firing of my brain cells. Slowly, timelessly, I am transported to a past that was so long ago and yet feels like yesterday.

I am sitting on the side of a mountain overlooking fields of rice stalks. They are gravid and are awaiting harvesting. A gentle breeze caresses them and their swaying creates waves of gold. The enchantment that holds me as I watch is enhanced by the susurious sound they make as they dance and touch with the breeze. The sun peaks through the smattering of clouds creating shadows that seem to dance in rhythm with them. The hypnotizing sounds stir something so powerful inside.

I open my eyes and am thrust back in to the darkness of my bedroom. My chest feels heavy. I am filled with the powerful pull of longing. The images I now see are of loved ones so far away. The loneliness of the moment falls heavy on me threatening to crush me with its jaws. I turn on my side and feel the pillow wet with my tears. I close my eyes again and let the darkness envelope me. I hear the rain again.

As I drift off to sleep, I try to think of rainbows and pray for the bright morning rays of sunshine to wake me up and banish the darkness that I now feel.

 1.

1. I was born and raised in the mountains of the Philippines but my first language was English until I was 3 when my grandmother taught me a tribal dialect.

2. I planted and harvested rice in leech-infested rice paddies with my maternal grandparents when I was younger, but I was rewarded with the best fruits and vegetables fresh my grandmother’s farm and I was allowed to climb all the fruit trees. I also got a ride home on our water buffalo.

3. I still climb trees and rocks to this day when I go hiking. I have fallen off several of them. I have a collection of scars, but fortunately, no broken bones.

4. I can fall asleep anywhere, anytime, in 3 seconds flat.

5. I have a nursing license in 25 different states, including Hawai’i. I lived and worked in most of them.

6. I experienced being pampered by a private chef, a personal limo driver, flown around in a Gulfstream, and given access to yachts; but I also lived in areas with no electricity, no running water, and slept on dirt floor. I prefer the latter. It reminds me of my roots, my childhood dreams, and keeps me humble; although it keeps me working for that daily dollar.

7. I love the ambience, the smell, the feel of old bookstores. I am transported to another world and I become lost.

8. I have traveled cross-country from corner to corner of the US – from the tip of Washington State to the Mexican border of San Diego to the ocean end of Key West to the mountain ranges of New Hampshire and many states in between. I would like to make it to the Canadian border of Maine one day.

9. My childhood goal was to become a pediatrician (I learned this word when I was 8), but I am eternally grateful to have become a nurse. I love my job!!!

10. I was a severe asthmatic when I was a child and nearly died twice. Every year of my life from the time I was six to the time I was 12, I spent a week to two months in the hospital. When I was nine, I told a nurse where to put my IV, how to adjust my oxygen mask, and when I can see visitors.

11. When I was ten, I used to skip school to smoke stolen cigarettes, drink pilfered vodka, get into fist fights with some boys, and I even had a girlfriend. I would like to think I have evolved since then.

12. I love platform shoes, platform heels, and mini-skirts.

13. I have been blessed with a good life and a close, loving, and supportive family. My parents are my heroes. I won the parents lottery!!!

14. I believe that every relationship (professional, friendly, romantic) must begin with a foundation of trust and honesty and solid communication without which the relationship would fail eventually.

15. I have the best friends one could ever pray for. They keep me grounded and they never let me keep a secret but they will keep mine without question. And they are always very honest with me even when I don’t want them to be.

16. I believe that, to have and keep a healthy and happy relationship with everyone close to us, we must first be happy and content with ourselves and where we are in our world.

17. I believe that a happy, positive attitude attracts the same. Our friends are a reflection of who we are. I believe what business philosopher Jim Rohn said, that you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

18. I still wonder how I am able to get in a helicopter, take care of critically sick people, understand my job, and write up a complex patient chart when I constantly lose my keys and trip over my own feet.

19. I love traveling and having adventures with my sister. It’s great to have such a wonderful friend related to me. We have so much fun together. Our last fight was in 1996. We’ve never been closer since.

20. I am amazed at how wonderful and beautiful the world is and I have been blessed to have met very good people throughout my life who have enhanced, enlightened, and enchanted my lived experiences. Thank you to all of you.

21. No matter how many times I take the Myers-Briggs test, I always end up as an ENFP. Go figure.

22. Never give me caffeine or sugar and always feed me when I say I’m hungry. This is if you value your sanity.

23. I love stories about dragons, pixies, trolls, elves, and childhood fantasy creatures. I want to own a real magic wand like Harry Potter’s.

24. I believe in necessary evil but I wouldn’t want that job.

25. If I was given the choice to do my life over, I wouldn’t change a thing except that I would age very, very slowly so I would still look like I do now when I turn 70.

What I remember most about you is how well you listened. How much you paid attention. You had a way of sitting so silently... When we first met, you seemed like you were in some other reality that I was never sure if you even heard me; but at unexpected moments, you’d ask a question that always threw me. It would be some detail about my story that you’d ask about to clarify a point. It was maddening but so endearing. Amazingly enough, every time I talked to you, I always felt that I was the center of your attention. You were very good at that.

You paid attention. That was something so unique about you. I came home after work one morning and was so wonderfully surprised with flowers and rose petals scattered around the apartment. Apparently, during one of my ranting days, I told you that I would love to go home after such a hard shift at the hospital and smell flowers. I didn’t remember saying that but you did and you made it happen.

I remember that day we sat at the top of Black Mountain waiting for the sun to set over the ocean. It was a beautiful day and Morro Rock solidly graced the bay. You were lying on the grass looking up at the sky. You said, “’the sky’s the limit’ really isn’t that hard to reach, you know. If you work hard enough and learn how to make a rocket, you can make it there.” That statement epitomized everything that is you. Motivated, driven, focused, unstoppable.

Yes, I remember. I remember the wonderful times we’ve had. They are memories that are both sweet and painful. The memories flood my whole being now like it was just yesterday and you are still there. I am waiting for someone to say that there has been a terrible mistake.

I am most blessed to have met you. You enhanced my life in countless ways. Our hearts were one once. My heart will always have you in it.

I’ve led my life in a way that I should not regret. At least, I’ve tried to. I’m just like everyone else, in a way. Most of the time, I feel like I would live forever. It is only with my job that I realize that, in one instant, my loved ones may have to find a way to cope with the loss of not having me around anymore. I have thought about my death a few times, though not in the manner in which I would meet it, but the consequences of its aftermath. Though I am glad that I am loved by so many, it is difficult to imagine the amount of sadness and pain that I would leave behind.

We do not often think of our mortality or the fragility of our lives. Most people expect to wake up again the next day and the day after that. Most people do not ponder their deaths. Death – the end of life. It is too scary and unimaginable – the pain of the end of things, the end of accomplishments begun, the unthinkable horror of things undone, of things that would never be.

The young, the strong, the healthy, the determined, the motivated – life continues and unceasingly. This is the way it should be. Rephrasing Gibran, we should seek hours to live, not to kill and so we go on.

Even as we hear of other people dying, the news itself is so distant. It is something that happens, but not to us. When death touches other people, we sympathize in the way a distant, disconnected spectator looks on.

A few days before Christmas, one of the most awesome people I have ever met lost his life. He had the mellowest temperament. Kenji competed professionally in Muay Thai. Even when he was in the ring, he always looked so calm and relaxed like it wasn’t really a fight. His mellow temperament was a paradox to his competitive nature. He laughed easily as well. We matched wit for wit. He was a peacock, but he had every right to be. He took care of himself almost to obsession. He believed in giving back to the world and contributing something positive and helpful to humanity. He gave up professional kickboxing and went to medical school. He was a year shy from graduation.

Having some time off from school for the holidays, he went home to visit with family and friends. At a party, someone challenged him to a fight because he overheard his girlfriend say Kenji was “cute.” So, on to the backyard they go. Kenji would never have hurt him and he didn’t. The guy tried his best to land a hit and he never did. When Kenji noticed the other guy was tired, he took him down. Fight over. All in good fun, so everyone thought. So, back to the party all of them went. Unknown to anyone, the guy seethed underneath. He went home, fetched his gun, returned to the party, walked up casually to Kenji and shot his head from behind.

In the flash of that muzzle, lives have forever changed. What is the sense in that? To attempt to find some rational explanation for what happened is a futile exercise. The same unanswerable question always comes: “why?” It IS a mad world out there. Who knows why people do the things they do.

Lost in the forest...

Lost in the forest,

I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell,

or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me,

hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there,

the hazel-sprig sang under my tongue,

its drifting fragrance climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind cried out to me,

the land I had lost with my childhood---
and I stopped,

wounded by the wandering scent.

Pablo Neruda

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I’ve worked on this video for a couple of hours, then spent hours more trying to figure out how to format it so I can upload it directly here. I never got it to work but it works on Photodex.

Watch it here: http://www.photodex.com/sharing/viewshow.html?fl=3056589&alb=0

I’ve been reading Pablo Neruda’s poems today and this one caught me. I spent a couple of days in the mountains . . . hiking . . . reminiscing . . . soul-searching . . .

The land of my fathers, the land and the mountains where I spent my youth – they call out to me. Perhaps I would never see them again. Perhaps I would. The days I’ve spent in North Lake Tahoe have partially calmed my soul . . . I crave for more, though.

In the middle of the forest, the smell of the pine trees has transported me back to a time in my childhood when I used to play hide-and-seek in the trees with my friends. I remember the crude tree house we made . . . it wasn’t even a house, really. It was discarded cardboard set atop some branches with a makeshift rope ladder. I remember it being fun, though. We could take up the ladder and quietly watch people as they passed by without them knowing that we were there.

I’d like to be lost in the forest again, to be enmeshed in its sounds, its smell. . .

An email from a friend today has awakened a distant memory, stirred an unexplainable longing, teased thoughts about love and romance. It made me wonder about the wonderful things and experiences I’ve had that I didn’t fully appreciate. My carefree personality sometimes predisposes me to superficial grasps to life experiences.

Many moons ago, I quietly slipped out of someone’s life. I didn’t think I had made such an impact in his life that it would matter too much if I just left. A few months later, I received a hand-written letter with a poem by Neruda. I thought then how sweet it was and thought I understood how he felt about me. Maybe not.

Today, I received a link from a friend. Andy Garcia reads the poem and it was so hauntingly beautiful. It’s a foggy day out and it’s so quiet here. The perfect conditions for nostalgia. So, here I am – listening to Andy read and having random thoughts of ex-lovers and old memories.

Reading this poem again gives me an appreciation of the love I’ve received from so many people and it is a reminder of how fragile hearts can be and hope I never break anyone else’s.

Tonight I Can Write - Andy Garcia

Puedo Iscribir by Neruda

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example,’The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.’

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.

She loved me and sometimes I loved her too.
How could one not have loved her great still eyes.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
To think that I do not have her. To feel that I have lost her.

To hear the immense night, still more immense without her.
And the verse falls to the soul like dew to the pasture.

What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is shattered and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight searches for her as though to go to her.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but how I loved her.
My voice tried to find the wind to touch her hearing.

Another’s. She will be another’s. Like my kisses before.
Her voice. Her bright body. Her infinite eyes.

I no longer love her, that’s certain, but maybe I love her.
Love is so short, forgetting is so long.

Because through nights like this one I held her in my arms
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

Though this be the last pain that she makes me suffer
and these the last verses that I write for her.

Woke up energetic and refreshed this morning. Not sure what happened but the day started out well.

I went out to the aircraft for our daily checks with my partner. That went fast as usual. Then as I am securing our equipment, I feel a searing pain in my hand. I looked down and I see blood seeping out of it. What the?!@!? Oh well. I’ll survive that. At least, blood isn’t gushing.

As I exit the aircraft and close the door, I slam it on my fingers. Now, I have two fingers the size of golf balls! Very sexy!!! It’s par for the course this morning, apparently.

I’m at work ready for some flying but I don’t think it’s going to happen today. It’s cold and foggy out. Ugh! Thank God for long underwear; otherwise, I’ll be cold, hungry, cranky, and bored.