Around the World with Jami Cakes

I met this beautiful girl in Italy, where she was staying at a hostel I was working at. We connected instantly on our love of food and of solo travel. She spoke Italian and I loved to eat Italian food, it was a match made in heaven. 

It was brief but we have kept in contact ever since, supporting, encouraging and leaning on each other through our respective trials. South America was somewhere we talked about travelling together. Unfortunately I'm not able to just yet, but I hope that you will join me in sharing her fascinating and passionate life through her blog. 

Around the World with Jami Cakes: LA to LIMA AND A SENSE OF FAMILIARITY IN BETWEEN

Attention

All experience is shared, either through experience or knowledge. All human emotions, all human experiences for that matter exist within a range. We can browse experiences but we do not lease their unique DNA for our own. We own the rights to our perspective only.

I wanted so badly to know myself as a unique. A Colorform on a wide and expansive sheath of space, free to stick, un-stick at will. But it seems we are more akin as vassals conducting our lives to pressure, expectation, conditioning, fear and culture; despite my greatest protests.

But what part of me protests?

And what part of me conforms? 

Are they really mutually exclusive?

Or part of a larger anxiety? 

A Push-Me-Pull-You of wanton grief and longing, running between acceptance, greener pastures and the long lonely migratory road between. Chasing that rainbow, despite knowing it has no end and no answer. It is my act of faith, my religiosity, to believe still, despite the evolution infront of me.

No peace in my heavenly doctrine, it is a fallacy of my own making. A fairy tale, that sets me off to dreamland each night and rouses me from its warm embrace, my happy place, between hot sheets, swaddled in the loving embrace of my fabric God; one part sandman, one part Dali Lama.

Where to go from here? Caught in the high clutches of a revealing perspective, somewhat aware of my own stupidity, in yet not quite sure what to replace it with. I don't want to give in. I don't want to give up. I don't want to loose in the game I have created for myself. My try, to walk my colorform ass off the sheet and say something. A grandiose jet fuelled concept, to hot to touch without the gloves delusion on, right hand narcissist, left hand maniac. 

Now let's play with these corrosive ideas. Burning bridges, burning futures, burning potential, fuel for the fire to keep this ego warm. Keep my masses satisfied, all those gathering in the court of my mind, spread the heat, the warmth of my love. Burn this life, for the characters that dance, indefinitely in this grey-space, in step to the bombastic twitches of my firing neurons. Brain chemicals as dry as 19th century water troughs, evidence of last nights party of beggars, criminals and warlords gathering in wait for my moving diatribe.

Attention! Attention all! I am about to say something profound and meaningful. I am about to change your life, to make you happy, to solve your problem with my monumental skills in articulate elocution.

Attention one and all. . .

Listen

Life is not a class in comparative literature. You do not get to write your story and compare and contrast thematic effectiveness with others. 

Stop feeling sorry for yourself because somehow you don't measure up. There are no answers as to who you are, in the lofty longing realms of desire.

Dream not of someone elses body, but feel and experience your own. 

Dream not of a better life, but how you can make this moment everything you need it to be. 

What you need is an intangibility written into the stars, you just have to reach out and grab it. Not in a song, or a book, or a series of photos of someone else life, but deep within yourself. 

There is a voice. 

Listen.

Failure

here's to mistakes.

here's to imperfections.

here's not not caring what they think.

here's to passion,

sloppy, messy, undone, manic, unfinished passion.

here's to misspelled words.

to underachievement.

here's to untidy rooms.

to distraction

and a lack of time management

to missing the details

others seem to obsess upon.

here's to a disorganized mess,

you can still find something in.

here's to colouring outside the lines.

to running a muck,

talking too loud,

and getting excited.

here's to unwashed hair

and clothes in a pile,

on the floor.

here's to inspiration

when it finds you,

in the middle of something 'important'

so important,

you have run off to the toilet,

just to write it down

even though

you know

you'll never use it.

here's to never being happy.

sleeping past the alarm,

fishing for every extra second,

to being late

for everything.

here's to impatience.

getting what you want

without all the trivial steps.

here's to grammar and spelling

and making a big mockery of the whole thing.

because you just couldn't give a fuck

what people think,

when you're trying to describe

the very subtle sound

the fridge door makes

when it suctions itself together

and how all doors

could benefit

from such a sense of completeness.

so fuck them.

fuck it,

if you don't fit.

fuck what you don't understand about them

I can guarantee you've given it more thought,

then what they have

to what they don't understand

about you.

so here's to taking a piss

all over the word potential

not that you can spell it anyway

they can keep perfection

they can keep right

you'll always have the fridge,

and how it feels

to be

alive.

Mick, one of my lovely regulars and fellow philosopher.

Faith in You

I am hearing the same song in two completely different places. One, a cafe in Paris over a year ago, and now here in this small cafe in an Outback town, still drinking skinny cappuccinos and trying to write a book.

Still in love with my life?

Still passionate about travel?

It seems I can't stop asking the questions. I've already gone down into the impermeable fabric of my mind, changed my own reality, saw the world through divine eyes, sat in misery and glory. I've done it all on a whirlwind, by the seat of my pants, alone and inverse to everything I had ever experienced. I've touched lives and been touched. I've crawled, clawed, drank, danced, ran and cycled my way around the world - to this very moment here. The bottom of this cup, it's warm, bitter bubbles settling in my stomach and this hot Australian sun. The buzzing of new creatures in my ears rides along with the incessant doubt, the persistent unending questioning of self and self-hood, value and values, life itself, people and their fallibility.

Stumbling my way through a mid-dessert caravan park, Stand by Your Man echoing from inside the one of the nomadic tin-boxes, lost to the muggy darkness;

Is this art?

Or failure?

Am I after something deeper and bigger? Or running from the bigger things I can't face? Like the implied mediocrity in 'real life', expectations and potential, neither actualized nor obtained. Hidden in the underlying layers of all my academic failures and all my half completed projects was a sense that one day, one day I would come good. All these ideas, feelings of isolation and loneliness, this competitiveness, the ease in which I spin – am I not capable of more than just creating family? Am I not more then the weight of my sheets, tea towels, Sunday BBQ'S and band practice? Worth more then just a job? Colour coordinated file folders, only using pencil, call backs and out-of-office replies? Or are these just the pleas of an outcast kid, with not a lot of guidance, fighting against the wanting sense of normalcy?

I find it difficult to be alright with myself. I find it difficult to not want everyone to love and care about me. I find it difficult to let go, of people, of the past, of things that don't work. I find it difficult not to get depressed easily. I find it difficult to get up in the morning, to stay focused and passionate life; and when I lose that, I loose everything. Because what else do I have, besides my bare-foot road side gypsy dreams? This is me coming good, and I still have to drag my ass every step of the way.

Maybe that's just the way it is. Maybe I'm not alone in that. Maybe the magic of life really is in the reflection, wrapped up in nostalgia and comparison. The best you can do sometimes is to keep exploring, keep learning, approach the newness with compassion, and even when you loose faith in it, try not to loose the faith, the world has in you.

Rainy Reflections

That was the loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard.

There was a blink of heaviness where the energy shifted right before I heard it.

CRACK!

I thought the walls of this 100 year old Outback Pub would surely collapse under the weight of it. Now every sound has me on edge. Fight or flight, the adrenalin rush provided through our ancestry is never that far under the surface of our modern rationality.

I flip back, to the second loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard. Ten years old I was sitting in the front-porch of our house. We lived in a small town where the streets were dead long before the night closed in and the high-lights of your life were to be found either in the goings on of people, or the goings on of nature. I was fortunate, for a time, that the later was my preoccupation and my passion. Nature, weather, and I have always had, I felt, a unique bond, an understanding with each other. Fascinated by the magic and power of storms and the changing seasons, I used to believe that there was some consciousness behind it. It was in the way the rustling leaves spoke, or the wind pulled and twisted the snow into magnificent patterns, the changing colours, the white-cap peaked lakes tormented by invisible forces. These were gifts and signs to me, things for me to enjoy, and manifestations of states of mind I still can't express.

CRACK!

The second loudest crack of thunder I've ever heard broke the glass in the single pane window in our small front-porch. It was awe-inspiring as the thunder rolled on and on to what seemed at the time to be far and distant places, unreachable from my small childish universe. Then came the rain. A rain so heavy, so warm it's comparison is used for all rains that have come after it. I took to that that quiet street in the middle of the night and danced and splashed and welcomed the rain with outstretched arms, head up to the clouds, marvelling at the ubiquitous way it fell from the darkness. With no beginning and no end, it rushed down the street in rapids, flowing over my bare feet and into the storm drains, taking with it the debris, rubbish and heat of the day.

It's amazing and strange the moments that stay with you forever, the ones you think about again and again – or at least, every time it rains.

This Place

It's hot. Inescapably so, the type that leaves foot-prints of warm clammy skin across your body. The back drips, the legs wobble and chafe. You feel it imprinting it's impetuous sense of rightousness upon you as soon as you deliver yourself out of the comfort of your air-conditioned space and into the mid-day air.

It doesn't create fearful panic, like the cold can, but a slow and frustrating boiling alive, an inescapable truth – nature will always win.

No matter how many 'truths' you can discover in life this living thing remains strange and difficult sometimes. So many moments seem to bring clarity and strength, but they walk in-hand with the endless questioning of our ability to do the best for ourselves. What is it that we really want? What is it that we desire and what is it that will make us happy, truly happy? These days come on like a migraine tinted with fear; the fear of failure, the fear of pain, the fear of loosing things you will regret and can't get back. Ultimately, fearful of ourselves and letting ourselves down by not achieving greatness, not achieving basic elemental moments of truth, reality and health. I know we are all wanderers by our own measure in a vast and seemingly endless sea of possibilities, outcomes, decisions and consequences, each no more dramatic, real, or important then the last. So how do you do it? How do you find levity amidst the crashing waves? A simple dismissal? A greater quest? Sometimes it feels that even the deepest parts of what we think we know are still just passing fancy. On some level everything is negotiable, everything is up for debate and open to change.

Except that one damn thing that never leaves. That biting polyp that presses itself inside you. Inescapable is the desire for more, for every experience that is possible. Having an open heart is to see yourself simultaneously in multiple universes, each one calling you with its own special promises of happiness and fulfilment. Standing on that cliff, head hanging over, hands firmly grasped to either side, not wanting to fall over yet not wanting to stop fantasizing about your own fatalistic plunge into the swaying trees below. You can be anything and everything, but our human minds, our sense of selfhood asks us to be one at a time. The problem is that the freedom we seek cannot be harnessed between them, it has to run between all possibilities, all outcomes. It has to see you belong everywhere, while the heart goes on knowing it belongs nowhere except inside your chest, fuelling your next steps into the unknown. Another cliff to ponder, another road to walk, another life to lead, all as seemingly meaningless and magical as the last. Here in this simple place I may have found a soft repose, the release and forgiveness I needed so desperately, but I have also found the relentless side of an identity that questions everything and will, not, stop. Tear my heart out for the ones I could spend the rest of time with and leave them that piece of me they will always own. Leave these fallen tears and spilled blood on the sidewalks I've grown to love and maybe, one day, I'll follow it back home again; my morbid and broken Hansel and Gretel trail of lost memories and lives I've left behind. Or maybe the rains of time will fall and wash it all away, lost to the passage of years I can't spend, split in pieces.

All the inspiration in the world, all the hope for the future doesn't make it any easier to loose the things you love, so for now this love becomes the new string I tie to the few remaining spaces of emptiness I have left. This time becomes coloured and sprinkled with the glitter and gold of nostalgia, a longing for a time I still inhabit, but am no longer allowed to own.