Autumn Cake

It’s spring in Australia and so I set out to make a bird’s nest inspired cake. I then remembered years before trying to do the same cake with two royal icing birds inside. I had some help that time. I didn’t quite get there with the bird’s nest cake this time so with all the pieces of a mistake I turned the cake into an Autumn leaf cake. It’s not what I had intended. I was really trying to make the birds nest cake on my own. I’m kind of glad it didn’t work out in some ways, my cake that is, because comparisons can be a bit problematic, like the way u might be compared to someone or something or an ideal that isn’t going to change the world in any positive way. Sometimes it’s helpful and sometimes it’s just not. 

Comparisons can feel like heartache, can become an illness or might threaten to stamp out everything beautiful about the different shapes, sizes styles and ways of life that make of joy. Sometimes it’s kind of lovely to compare, like the way you might do with the seasons. I realised that I often try to recreate the birds nest cake around springtime. I’ve made a stalagmite cake with the broken pieces once before.  I love those kinds of caves because all the pieces are so collective but so different too. I am listening to Four Season’s Vivaldi Autumn while writing today. It reminds me of a holiday in Prague. What struck me was how much music was alive in the churches and halls during the day, any day and virtually at any time. Sitting in a church listening to beautiful free music was a feeling of found freedom. It struck me that in Australia you didn’t get as much free organised music like that. I think it should be everywhere, free music supported by Governments and corporate entities; hospitals, shopping centres, churches, schools, festivals, in the streets, in libraries on transport and more. I’ve always said this and always will. Sometimes I repeat myself because it’s something I think worth repeating. 

The Seasons are pretty beautiful. It’s a bit of cliché to say that we start in the Spring of life and end up a Winter. I think one day can be full of the whole four in one. I think one year can be too, regardless of the age of the person. I once struggled with an eating disorder and would never have eaten any of the cake in this picture. I made a lot of comparisons with myself and other people back then. Mainly though it wasn’t as much about that but about feeling the winter of life creep in a bit too much but even in the Winter there were some beautiful snowflake moments, at bare bones.  There was spring again. There was Summer. There was that Autumn feeling of dancing through leaves in all of those beautiful hues. 

I recall a bit of a douche I knew suggesting my eating disorder was based in some truth around not actually being as hot as a super model. His idea was that I should aim for “less good looking people” to be around and it might help me deal with being more ordinary. Sometimes abusive people can make recovery difficult.  What the fuck is an ordinary person? I still haven't found one. I’m not a supermodel and to all the super models out there who have also had eating disorders, steer clear of abusive people if you can. The truth is though, wanting to disappear, to shed away the richness of flesh too much, the gift of good health is a serious illness. Comparisons make it more difficult to mend that decision to fade away forever though. It’s a true embodiment of anxiety and sadness. Recovery is totally possible though, like I’ve said before. 

The best way to run through leaves on grass is probably in bare feet, that way it doesn’t matter whether your shoes are the best or the most expensive and if you don’t run or walk through leaves it’s always lovely to see free gold falling around the earth. You can even see that all year round in the Australian bush. I always used to hunt through the scrub for red gum leaves fallen from the trees. I used to have a pair of Lucy shoes when I was really small, not in the sky with Diamonds. They were the ones I picked in a shop and I bought myself by doing jobs for people in the street. It was about a little girl who asked me to get my head out of the sky with diamonds and find some shoes for the ground. They had pictures of Lucy on them from the Snoopy comics. She decided she didn’t like those shoes either so I used to wear plastic bags over my shoes as a joke since she liked making me the butt of all jokes. I still preferred bare feet through the leaves most. Sometimes people do just want to feel the same even if they are not completely the same. Sometimes they want to feel different, It’s the push and pull of life that is. It’s sometimes terribly sad and sometimes it’s not. I love the song Autumn Leaves by Nat King Cole, especially when done via classical guitar. It’s that beautiful and worth getting lost in for a while or found in. In the seasons of life as they intertwine, may you be blessed with love.