From My Heart To Yours...

Good Friday - 25 March 2016 ... I haven't posted on this blog for a long time for a variety of reasons. Well... the fact that this blogspot started malfunctioning right after I spent a serious amount of time uploading several photos which soon mysteriously disappeared for no apparent reason, certainly caused a lot of problems. I didn't feel comfortable uploading anything else until I could find out why the photos suddenly went missing, & could trust it wouldn't happen again. After countless frustrating attempts to contact the individuals who are supposed to maintain this blogspot, with no success, I finally gave up & started a new blog at "www.ieyeofthestorm.tumblr.com". I have not had any technical problems with my 2nd blog. So if you want to see a more complete range of my creative works, I suggest you make your way there. I still keep this first blog though, because it has a statistical counter that tells me how many times my first blog has been viewed, that individuals from all over the world are looking at. Which I find fascinating. Because I know my work is "different". Yet it appeals to people from all kinds of cultures. I love to think that my creative works might be a source of joy and inspiration for so many people who have such a wide range of cultural backgrounds. I regret I don't have any of my artistic photos on my second blog yet. No new posts for several years actually. What can I say?? My life has been rather... "peculiar" and at times incredibly stressful since I started this blog. Since 2007 - 2008, my 4th husband John (who is also an artist) & I were evicted from the places we rented, lived in & had our art studios set up. Due to the properties being sold, the new owners wanting to renovate, so they could charge more rent, & we were in the way - "No Grounds". The last eviction was by property developers last July 2015. They demolished the old house we rented in Bankstown for six years, along with 3 adjacent properties. We and the other tenants were put at risk of being made homeless (again), so the property developers could build a $26 million luxury residential complex. A 1 bedroom apartment there is initially selling for $450,000. We fought the eviction for about 8 1/2 months because the first two eviction notices we received were illegal. Also because I was trying to save the garden design & maintenance business I had started from "scratch". Which I had worked on night and day for about three very intense years, and considered to be a special & unique form of land art. At the time we received the 1st illegal eviction notice about a week before Christmas 2014, it was in the middle of my busy season, during one of the hottest years on record. I had several gardens begun that were "works-in-progress". Although the majority of the plants I used in my gardens were highly drought-resistant. Most of them were not established enough to be left alone for the length of time it would take us to find a new place to live, raise the needed funds to move with, make the necessary preparations to organize the move, along with the time, effort & focus it would require during the actual move itself, then the time it would take to unpack & get settled in, before I could begin working on my gardens again. All this was happening just as my gardens were finally starting to pay off. I had invested all of our spare cash into my business. I couldn't afford to lose it. So yes, of course we "did not go gentle into that good night...". Fighting the last eviction was a lengthy, time-consuming process, terribly distracting, & of course very destabilising. In the end, my garden design & maintenance business was destroyed. The income we were receiving from my business was lost. Which made it even harder to bear the multiple costs of our latest forced relocation. Eventually, we received the third eviction notice. Which was "legal" & we were given 30 days to find a new place that was inhabitable, affordable & somewhat suitable to rent & relocate to. With the help of our friend Michael (who works full-time), it took us about 3 weeks to move everything we didn't have time to get rid of, needed and/or wanted to keep. We now live in a small 2 bedroom villa that is half the size of the house we were living in. Every time we have been forced to relocate, we have had to borrow money and/or spend all our money to avoid being made homeless & prevent losing everything we have worked so hard to create & hold dear. Every time we have been forced to move, our art studio was destroyed & required a great deal of extra time, money, effort & focus to rebuild. Every time we have been forced to move, I have been seriously injured due to lifting heavy objects that my body is just not designed to carry. Because we couldn't afford to hire removalists to help us relocate. Every time I suffered those personal injuries, it has taken me anywhere from a few months to about two years to recover from the injuries I sustained during each forced relocation for the sake of "progress". Every time we have been forced to move, we ended up losing the majority of our furniture, which we had to replace eventually when possible, or do without. From personal experience I can say that current laws and "rights" for renters in the "Lucky Country" are essentially destructive & incredibly destabilizing. They favor the property developers, & essentially... all those new developments are built by way of sacrificing the lives of the tenants they displace... We are forced to "pay for" those new developments being built - in terms of blood, sweat, tears & money we usually don't have to spare. It is one of the most unsustainable, destabilizing, destructive "legal", socially accepted and commonly practiced big business practices I have ever experienced. I daresay property developers, along with the council members they bribe to allow them to force more unfortunate tenants living in the wrong place at the wrong time in their districts into another vicious round of "musical houses"... the real estate companies & property managers that more often than not are willing to sacrifice the legal rights, finances, whatever peace of mind they may have had, & health of the tenants they are supposed to represent to the highest bidder... with the assistance of the lawmakers who draft & pass laws designed to systematically victimize and effectively marginalise the most vulnerable, displaced tenants... All those greed-driven individuals are responsible for the majority of the rapidly increasing population of homeless people in Australia and many other nations around the World. We are all connected in the Web of Life. What affects one, affects all sooner or later to some degree for Good or for Bad. This highly destabilizing & personally disruptive business practice is exponentially causing a multitude of social problems over time, that among other things, insidiously undermine & erode the very foundations of any society in which they are allowed to operate. Make no mistake... as an artist, designer, budding author & poet... I do not forget the many evils & flaws I have seen & encountered in our so-called modern society. In the back of my mind, I am automatically considering the most effective way to express & communicate the full implications and dangers of such destructive behaviors & social constructs that serve to marginalise the most vulnerable members of any society for the sake of the pleasures & amusements of a privileged, yet foolish & socially irresponsible few. Having lived on the Edge Of Nothing as long as I have, I daresay I have a very deep understanding of the precarious balance of modern society. Because I know that most of its foundations are built on the misery, disadvantage & systematic victimization & marginalization of the weakest & most vulnerable members of that society. That a complex series of business industries exist purely to use the least fortunate & most troubled members of society as a "reliable" source of revenue. Some of the misfortunes that many long-suffering individuals living on the Edge have been forced to endure have even been "intentionally manufactured" for the purpose of "milking them" for what they are worth from birth to death, & everything in between. Make no mistake... for those of you who are reading this blog, who are presently enjoying the safety, comfort & buffering environment of living in the mainstream, or even those of you at the heart of privileged society. But for the Grace of God/Allah/Buddha... whatever you call the Creator... at any time, at any place... your little "piece of Heaven" could easily change to Hell, Purgatory or Limbo in the blink of an eye. If and, or when that happens... when the "Winds Of Change" threaten to blow you off the Edge... what will you do? How will you endure & survive? How will you find the strength of will & focus to rise above your limitations for your sake & those you love & care about then? By the way, after our last forced relocation, my husband John has been very sick & in increasingly constant pain. I thought he had seriously injured his back during our last move. He put off going to the doctor as long as he could. He finally saw a new GP in St Mary's in Dec 2015 & had some tests made. Because of Christmas & New Year holidays, he didn't get his test results back until 18 Jan 2016. The test results indicated lung cancer. More tests were done to determine just how bad the situation was. It took another month to get detailed results. John has Stage IV non small cell lung cancer. He has about 4 or 5 tumours in both lungs. According to conventional medical treatments & procedures... his cancer is inoperable & incurable. I am 59 years old, going on 60,000 (in artist years). I have been married four times, divorced twice & widowed at age 42 when my 2nd husband, Steven Craig Minsky died a very bad death at age 43. Once again, I am a widow standing at an open grave. Last November 2015, I came to the realization that as long as we rent, John & I will always be vulnerable to unexpected & disastrous evictions & the resulting extra costs & associated injuries. So I decided it was time to MAKE A CHANGE. Against all odds, I went to Open Portfolio Day at Sydney University's College Of Fine Arts & showed my portfolio. The teacher who interviewed me passed me within five minutes after I sat down. He was laughing throughout the entire interview. I then applied for admission to Sydney University to enroll at their College Of Fine Arts to pursue my long-delayed Bachelor Of Visual Arts degree. I received an offer from Sydney University about a week after we first learned about John's cancer. I wept tears of Joy and Sorrow when I found out about my offer from Sydney University because that was a "gamechanger". So is John's cancer. Once again, I stand between Heaven & Hell. I accepted the offer. But because of John's "terminal" illness, & our present circumstances of financial hardship - a cumulative result of all the forced relocations we have endured, along with a multitude of other kinds of hardships that I don't wish to explain at this time... I have deferred enrollment until March 2017. John's prognosis is poor. According to statistics I have read, he has about a 1% chance of survival. I am his caregiver, & am exploring alternate natural healing treatments in the hope of curing his cancer. I may not succeed, & he may not survive. But it won't be for lack of trying. "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the Light". Whether my husband John lives or dies... I will be attending University. There are all kinds of scholarships I am eligible to apply for. Somehow, some way, I will raise the needed funds to pay for my tuition. Why am I telling you this?? So you will know that no matter how hard Life may be for you at this time... there is always someone else who is doing it tougher than you are. And so you will understand that too much destabilization & disruption can impede the most passionate of artists. Can make it nearly impossible for any of us to produce our best works or much of it during such terrible times of troubles. I can be slowed down & distracted. But nothing will ever make me stop living as creative a life as it is possible for me to do. I hope for your sake... come what may... that you can say the same. Be true to yourself no matter what. From my heart to yours, Becky Jo Blanton Summers Minsky Goodridge Hull