A place that I’ve always wondered about where creativity and fruition intermix.
In Hawaiian Kai Lani means, Where the Sea and Sky meet.
I can’t help but notice that in this actual physical form it is only a place we can see, only a place we can feel with insight, and only a place we can imagine visiting, but that we’ll never actually “get to” or “be at”.
If we chased this vista in a boat we’d never come to the place where the sea and sky meet. If we flew to it with a plane we’d never see the end of the oceans…
It would all just continue…
Into land, into another sea, into more land, on and on and on…
Maybe this is the metaphor. Maybe this is the meaning that has been staring us in the face all along.
When we embrace the magnitude of where the sea and the sky meet, even when we try to reach this place by swimming, by journeying, with a boat, with a plane or even travelling through our minds, we’ll just keep going, and so who’s not to say that EVERYTHING just keeps going? Just like the cycles of seasons. Just like the rotations of the sun. Just like the turning of the earth. It all keeps moving.
And so, in my mind and in my heart when I visit this place, Kai Lani, metaphorically, I feel an opening occur, a knowing space that I cannot physically get to, but an idea or a concept that I can hold in my mind and heart at the same time with a name… Kai Lani…
Maybe this is how we really travel to this space, by owning our physical limitations and yet opening our metaphysical explorations through the imagination, the visualizations, and our dreams…
Kai Lani speaks to me… She has called my name before… She has always spoken through the word and feeling of Home.. Ringing like a bell in my heart, the low tone that one never notices underneath the noise and busy-ness of daily life.
Home, she says like a gong being struck ringing louder and louder.
The first time I heard Her I cried back to her, I’ve been looking for you all of my life…
I’ve been travelling. I’ve been swimming. I’ve been hiking. I’ve been running. I’ve been floating aimlessly at sea. I’ve been through the storms. I’ve induced the scars of my own destruction. I’ve been drowning in sorrow for many years because I thought I could not find you…
Home, she says again singing softly and sweetly this time, and this is where I stop. I stop to really hear her and feel her with all of my senses. I stop to allow the feeling of Home invade all of me. Cruising through all the concepts that have been made up by conditions, memories, learnings on the streets, on tv and school and such. Some of which being valuable lessons and some of which only needed to be cast back out into the drifting seas…
Although I have heard Her and felt Her some days I still climb the cold jagged coastal rocks and look out beyond the crisp crashing waves to catch another glimpse of Her. I rest my hand just above my brow to shield my eyes from the rays of the sun and look out at this space. Kai Lani… I say to her, but she’s already heard my call through the movement of actions.
I rest sitting on this rock in my hometown. A place that I have spent years of my life drifting from feeling at home to feeling not so welcome, to leaving and abandoning, to coming home to celebrations again and again. But this time, I must admit that I have never seen this specific rock before even though I know that it must have been here all along.
Home she says to me again as a soft reminder of summer wind blows across my face on this cool Spring day reminding me of what season is yet to come. And now she is here, and I speak to her by listening very deeply to her presence, and I hear her, and honestly somedays I am not so sure how I do it. But I keep walking the steps, I keep searching the sightlines, I keep writing the pages, I keep stopping at the vistas, I keep climbing the mountains, I keep moving in boats, I keep flying in airplanes, but not with an insistency or an urge to find her anymore…
Kai Lani, this meeting of home, this meeting of Sea and Sky, but with a fullness, with a wave, with an embrace, with a warmth, with a hug, with a deep listening ear, with the all noticing eyes, with the knowing that She is Right here, She has always and ever been right here.
