KANGAROO IN MY KITCHEN

Ethel Sloan

ONE AMERICAN WOMAN'S DEVISTATING EXPERIENCE OF LIFE DOWN UNDER

After a hellish two-year stay in Australia her impressions are seen through anything but rose-coloured glasses.

Ethel Sloan with husband Bernie and their two sons left New York with visions of a private tennis court overlooking the surf, aborigines and kangaroos just around the bend. After a hellish two-year stay in Sydney, Ethel’s impressions are seen through anything but rose-coloured glasses. Australian women in the late 70’s are seen as "wrinklies" after thirty.

Husband Bernie was "the biggest thing since MacArthur" at the advertising agency; sons Paul and Steven started at a “Dickensian” public school with regular canings and warm curdled milk.

Ethel on the other hand didn't/couldn’t fit the Sydney stereotype. Solitary vermouth or Valium helped pass the days. She observers how enervated housewives don't play tennis, use time-saving appliances, or even visit each other; while men remain lean and vital, women retreat to household chores and turn fat by forty.

She talks about geysherlike washing machines, stolen cars, keystone-kops-like police and Australian idiom "English isn't always English", and “Not to worry”, not to mention flying cockroaches, broken down tourist buses, and school canteens.

Nobody cared about sharks at the beach, skin cancer, atrophy of human potential; returning to exercise classes and expansive neighbours seemed like coming out of Purdah.

A wonderful little book particularly for those who grew up in Sydney's North Shore in the 70's and can relate to the idiosyncrases of the time tho perhaps with not such a critical eye.

ISBN 10: 020713698X

ISBN 13: 9780207136986

Publisher: Angus & Robertson Publishers, Australia

Date published: 1979

Peace is Every Breath

Jack Dikian

September 2011

Peace is Every Breath: A practice for our Busy Lives, by renowned Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh and published by Rider (2011)

I came by this little book quite by accident. The title grabbed me right away. Peace is every breath – a practice for our busy lives. I thought what an insightful remark. We tend to take breathing for granted until illness takes it away.

The book opens with:

Waking up this morning, I smile, Twenty-four brand new hours are before me, I vow to live each moment fully, and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion.

I’m always reminded that tomorrow is a brand new day with no mistakes so I immediately found resonance with twenty-four brand new hours.

Thich Nhat Hanh does not suggest that we escape from reality and put our busy lives on hold. Rather, he provides the insight and tools we need to incorporate the practice of mindfulness into our every waking moment. Having studied Acceptance & Commitment Therapy, I was particularly interested in how the author handles the overlap of Buddhism and psychology in theory and in practice. One of the more interesting things about Acceptance & Commitment Therapy is not fighting your thoughts and emotions but acknowledging and feeling them as a way of defusing them.

Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how we can transcend the mad rush of our days and discover within the here and now our own innate ability to experience inner peace and happiness. If this sounds a little of Zen Buddhism you would be very right.

Zen Buddhism has gained a lot of popularity in the West partly because of this emphasis on the here and now. In Zen there is an emphasis on the interdependence of body and mind. Even if you are not a Buddhist, this little book is a useful guide to bringing mindfulness into your everyday life, or more to the point, it can help us experience life more mindfully. His message is that regardless of how busy we are, we can learn to live mindfully.

Living mindfully means paying attention to whatever is most prominent in our field of awareness in any given moment without judging or evaluating it, and without reacting, as best we can. For example, when having that Delima take a moment to savor the flavor of the tea. The way it feels in your mouth and as it runs down your throat. Notice the feel of the cup in your hands, the way you bring it to your mouth.

The author’s words come from a man who has seen it all. He’s witnessed war in his home-land, he’s been persecuted by the rulers of his country, and in the face of all that, he rises above them to teach us how his experiences can be adapted them into our own lives. Chapters advise on every aspect of our daily lives. Whether it’s showering, driving, etc his wisdom challenges us to slow down, see things as they truly are and to awareness throughout our lives.

Cloudstreet

Jack Dikian

June 2011

Let me say right from the start – this has to be Tim Winton’s best novel without a doubt.

Two families flee their rural livings to share a house in the Perth suburb of West Leederville. The two families are contrasts to each other; the Lambs find meaning in industry and in God’s grace; the Pickles, in luck. The Lambs’ God is a maker of miracles; the Pickles’ God is the ‘Shifty Shadow’ of fate. And so the story is unfolds all against post-world war II Australia.

As the back page synopsis states: "Cloudstreet a broken down house of former glories on the wrong side of the tracks, a place teeming with memories of its own, a place of shudders, shadows and spirits.

The Lambs and Pickles together roister and rankle in a divided house that begins as a roof over their heads and becomes a home for their hearts. In this novel full of wonder and dreams, the author weaves the threads of lifetimes, of 20 years of shouting and fighting, laughing and grafting, into a story about acceptance and belonging.

Reminiscent of the Merry-Go-round in the sea the novel is riddled with teasing slang, expressions unique to down under, and humor in the face of adversity and a much simpler Australia.