It’s been more than busy and chaotic since we moved. There’s still a lot of work to do in the house and every moment one can or has energy (or one is not in too severe back pain) is used in working in some part of the house. I had a video shoot with Maija last week, we’ve had visitors checking out the house who have been more or less terrified how unfinished it all is but we have also had great nights with friends sitting in the living room enjoying lovely dinners and sipping wine until the early hours. And many by passers and visitors have also helped us with some work; with the help of Hannu we managed to carry the fridge and one of the stone work tops upstairs, Jukka helped with the veneering of one wall in the living room and with Juha we got the large stone work top into its place and carried the heart of our fire place upstairs. And Lea brought all kinds of plants from her garden for us to plant into ours. So thank you all very much!
I’ve also promised to write a few columns and participate in one blog discussion which will be published later in the autumn in one magazine. It’s been difficult to find time to write in piece with all the work in the house as well as the visitors but last night was great as Pekka went fishing with Hannu (what a great dinner we ate with fish and mushrooms today!), Justiina was outside playing with other kids and Zulani left to visit his grandparents and I managed to write one of the columns in peace. It’s a bit tricky to promise to write columns and participate in all kinds of discussion and have production meetings and video shoots on your so called ‘freelancer’s summer holiday’. A consultant I met with in June, said that I should very precisely define each year when I work and when I absolutely don’t do any performances, work on any projects but totally take time off. I guess I need more than one session with him to sort out my schedules! Hopefully my producer will be able to help me with that as well in the near future.

Hope you are all well and rested,
Johanna

ps. It’s Johanna’s name day in Finland today!

Another day of work at the Blue House. Treating the panels was kind of meditative today; was focusing on my breath and the movement, tried not to strain my back too much. There was a beautiful, peaceful and silent moment when the children were inside drawing and playing and I was working on the back yard with Pekka. There wasn’t anything else, no visions of the future, no memories from the past, just us working in silence together. The weather forecast promised rain showers for today but it didn’t rain in the end. A few snowflakes were falling from the sky every now and then but they didn’t bother us.

I just put a dinner into the oven. I realised that it’s three days in a row that I’ve used crushed tomatoes in the dinner. This is not the first time I pay attention to this but every now and then I get really irritated by this. As you probably know, tomatoes are ‘plants of darkness’ and one should not eat any of them. According to macrobiotics anyway. I’m not macrobiotic but I used to be into all those things much more than I’m now. So the day before yesterday, my son hoped for a pasta with shrimps in tomato sauce and as he had been ill, I fulfilled his wish. Yesterday I made a kind of soy crush for the kids to go with rice. Today I’m doing this eggplant, potato (another ‘plants of darkness’!), zucchini and goat cheese dish baked in the oven, with a little bit of tomato sauce in between the vegies. Well, there might be worst things in life, I don’t know.

I thought about my new works today a lot. Maybe I do the performances in a gallery, so that the video/photographic material from the solo work could be shown as an installation and the group piece still could be performed in the same space. I could maybe get the space for a week or so. The number or audiences that can fit into the space is very limited, which I don’t mind, but I will need to think about that a little more.

Maybe it all starts to fall into its place.

I’m back to listening music, I realize. Fun, inspiring.

Johanna