THE WAY OF THE SKAG (p.2)

That's AllHers wearing a CRYSTAL BELT as a headband admiring her new CRABTREE and EVELYN rose water products. I found these belts that were 70% off...with crystals and rhinestones...like i've never seen before. They weigh a ton. C bought a lavender one and i bought TWO. We found the one store open: KLOTHES RUSH and scored majorly on gumboots, danskos, and other incredulous bits.
Chera couldn't decide what colour "holey soles" to buy.
(that pic coming up)
There is Queen Candice and Maggie and me holding my 'guitar' on the beach. We were just finishing up our video shoot.
Here is an incredible Still Life Of Stuff that Chera put together of shoes we bought and shoes we brought. What does this picture make you think of? Does it make you think: What the fuck?
Sunday morning at SERGEANT PRESTON'S LODGE!
Maggie on a GOLD blanket (are these the kind they make out of plastic pop bottles?)

Thank you to CHERA who sent me these edited pics ready to roll.
Righteous.

THE WAY OF THE SKAG

That was a good weekend.

More on this.

But i'll leave you with a photograph - the best one of the batch. Chera playing an inflatable guitar..doing Chera Guitar..on her BIRTHDAY!

yeah! plenty more where that came from!

Skagsville, Alaska

We're on our way to Skagway in a carload full of skaghags listening to boz skaggs.

One of my favourite artists, Meesoo Lee made me that image today (as per a request)

Thanks, Meesoo.

I'm just stealing 'Devil Woman' off the internet for my Evil Woman/Black Magic Woman mix I've been working on for a few months now.

And here is the devil woman herself:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=-8xoAXgmJ-s

Each Other

http://youtube.com/watch?v=2Rrs8-oqCDM

i want to watch the entire episode.

i love george clooney in it ("The Cloonster" as i like to call him) - he's kind of like Schneider from One Day At A Time.... both handymen..lisa smolkin and i have a joke about Schneider..all we have to do is say the word:

SCHNEIDER

and it's peals of laughter for 5 minutes
at least

S- if you are reading this - i got the Hello, Blue Roses disc in the mail yesterday. It's so beautiful. I cried. The sweetheart duo is.......IS RULING!
And I wore the H.B.R. t-shirt (w/ tiny bell sleeves) you screened right away and then to bed.

I'm designing a book cover for Lisa Foad. She is a writer from TO, ON. Her writing is INTENSE! It's the real kind. It's rock'n'roll writing. So hells yeah i'll do the cover! One of the characters is named GOLD. Gold is a constant, predominant symbol in my life right now: Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes - a feminist bunny story from the 1930s. The Sea of Tea bought it for me just before Easter. It's a beautiful book about a mum bunny with 21 children..she does it all. Cover is above Schneider. Where else would it be?
Also gold: neil young's Harvest (my favourite album cover of all time), lisa prentice's costume at the C>R>E>A>M> party - come dress according to your relationship to money - rich or poor she came as gold, living in the yukon - the gold rush, after the gold rush, an idea to do a painting of a gold toilet seat..well, you get the picture. I came here to strike gold. The Yukon. I'm striking it in my own way. The only way I know how.

I walk thru the snow to get to work (a barely part-time job which suits me just fine since i have about 7 of my own jobs). It's all melting now. It's mudslide and clay now. I am still waiting for my new Hunter gum boots to arrive. They're made in *Scotland* by appointment of Her Majesty the Queen.
Sea of Tea, inspired by.

I go to the pool alot in the Yukon. It's up the street across the Alaskan Highway. When I first got here - just after Halloween - I went almost everyday. I sat in the sauna and the heart-shaped whirlpool. It was all i could do - aside from cry every day. The water is a big help. It was especially helpful to jump in the cold water and then back to the sauna or steamroom.

The other night there was this amazing treat lady there! she must be in her early 50s but *looks* and acts like a 25-year old. She looks like she lives in her bikini and on the beach all day all night. She has long, permed banger hair, toes rings, coral nail polish, bikini from mexico and major fake'n'bake. You can't help but notice her while doing AQUASIZE or aquafit....she's cruising back and forth.

Best part: i go into the sauna and there she is stretched out occupying 5 seats like she's in a bacardi rum or malibu ad. She's got her tunes cranked. I am dying to find out what she is listening to. I sat there and sat there waiting..trying to hear it over the din of lifeguard's choice outside that accessible flaming lips album...i'm about to pass out from the heat but i won't give up till i find out. Finally she gets up and unplugs...i said with a big friendly smile:

Watcha listening to?

She widesmiles back banger style: Oh yeah, whatever i can download...(flips her hair back)..you know...NICKELBACK

That's the Jackpot! That's GOLD.

It was a moment i wish i could have shared with someone i no longer share those kinds of moments with. we shared many, many NICKELBACK moments together. Many chad kroeger moments..culiminating with the fool as my facebook friend.

you must laugh
to keep from crying.

maybe i'll make some art about it (the lady in the sauna that is...i really wish i had my camera)

my goal is to post photos from my time up here in the yukon. I take lots of photos out in the woods on my walks. I've captured some really beautiful scenery. My time here
could possibly be in its final stretch...we have the house till mid-summer and after that Cathy Lee Coats the Flower Fairy is coming up to meet me and we might drive back. I don't know. I'm a roller and a gypsy queen so WHO KNOWS?

In the meantime, I am completely enjoying the extended daylight. It's already starting. It is still light out at 9:45 pm. And the aurora is kicking in. Ben and I saw a glorious version the other night. Finally! it's been months that i've been waiting. This aurora was stretched across the sky - like neon buried under carbon. I swear to god, you can feel the electro-magnetic force. I have evidence.

PS i'm really into making Lisa Foad's book cover. I get to do whatever I want. I've been scanning all night. She is so lovely to work with - so respectful of my art. I can feel it coming in the air tonight.

I'm also trying to locate a pair of size 7.5 Air Jordans online...or the very least nike high-tops...in a dark colour. I hate ebay so far..living remote, i have to rely on the internet for locating what i need/want...what are ebay tips?

It's late. Time for bed.
sleeptight
love sonja

Grace Zabriskie' Art

Sweet Gee

"I do less waiting by the phone than anyone I know in the business. I don't wait for a job. I just go on to my own work. Some people are suspicious of others who have more than one talent. I've had poets tell me to my face that an actress can't be a poet".

-Grace Zabriskie



My mother dreamed years ago that I abandoned my baby in a train station's bathroom. She found the baby under a sink. I was nowhere to be found.

we laughed about it at the time..but that dream has always stuck.
it would never happen..but it's how i feel about the blog...
it's been almost a month since i last posted. i've thought about it! i imagined posts in my mind....but once again, i feel so vulnerable right now. i'm just not sure how much more vulnerable i want to make myself. i don't know how much i want to release the beast. the beast is under wraps right now. tightly leashed.

maybe i need to let it rip.

this is why i love correspondence..it's a back and forth..specific...this is just me putting it out.

to who? where? i don't know.

i'll figure this out somehow.

in the meantime - here are the posts i thought about:

an expose on Grace Zabriskie and her art (see pics above)

my 2 day fixation on trepanation (the act of drilling a hole into one's head to activate optimal blood flow. An artist named Amanda Fielding performed one on herself as an art project. I read about it in a fancy art journal "Cabinet". I was deeply disturbed. She used a dentist's drill. She performed it flawlessly in 1970. Later she ran for British parliament using "Trepanation for National Health" as a platform. After a bit of digging deep research (feeling quite ill about it like i was watching a horror movie), i learned she was a super flake landlady and quickly lost interest.

dawson city photo diary

Big Love. I watched season two while last in Dawson. I went to *JIMMY'S* video store and tried to rent a single disc and the lady said, 'no. you have to rent the whole thing'...OKAY, says I. sounds decent. I have to say, Big Love is flawless.
A show about a polygmyist family living in the Utah suburbs with chloe, bill paxton (Weird Science), harry dean stanton AND grace zabriskie. it's too much for me to handle. It's a beautiful hilarious soap opera not unlike...Dallas. I see that david byrne has taken over the music component of the show. he's doing an okay job...i don't know about the avril lavigne tune he chose. He did choose my favourite 10 CC song (also used well years back in the Virgin Suicides) in a poignant moment: I'm not in love...

etc.

Here in the yukon, i have never felt better - healthwise, that is (which leads to otherwise). I sleep and exercise and eat well. Lots of clearing.

This Is How I Build A Book

my friend sarah cain said it's like i'm hanging the laundry up to dry.

i've been living with these pages for four months now.

i did do a clean up last week and took them all down and organized them into sections: Lives Of Girls And Women, Failed Relationship (We Almost Had It is a working title), Banger Pyramid, The Selves, It Comes In Waves, Beautiful Pages....

the pages come down, the pages go back up.

i was feeling particularly destructive the other day and borrowed ben's shredder and pushed some paper through that. That felt really good.

I had unearthed a whole other box i had forgotten about - it made me feel exhausted. I'd printed off old email correspondences from a few years ago...i shredded them.

i was watching the making of marie-antoinette and i learned some interesting things about process. There are 2 opera scenes in the movie but they had shot three. Each scene clearly a MAJOR production. I loved hearing about how *they* decided to cut an entire scene - tens of thousands of dollars, hours and hours of people power...gone poof!

so a bunch of old papers...my life...doesn't really matter.

it's liberating.

i'm starting to work more on the computer lately - for the book. Today i designed some pages. I used Cooper Black font to spell out: You Know You Want It.

and i used my own calligraphy with these brush pens i love: Enjoy It While You Can.

I am also writing songs right now.

I have no idea where they are going - if they are going anywhere...i should be more superstitious..i shouldn't talk about projects...but really i am only talking about what i have been doing.

we'll see what comes to light.

( but i have been talking with a musician friend - we would like to do a project. i would love that..i wrote songs before and i sang them and reading the songs over now - they are still totally relevant - to me. i know i wrote them because i had to but i see now that they are a part of the whole body of work i started making in the early 90s. The lyrics were gleaned from the bookwork...crystallized forms).

so maybe this is what needs to happen now.

again.

who knows?

---------------------------------------------------

The Sea Of Tea Asked Me:

who's gwen?

why, Gwen Stefani!! from our favourite band NO DOUBT.
epilogue of the gwen perfume...i ended up having to have a second shower and use a STAIN REMOVER on my ski jacket to get the reek out.

(actually, the Sea of Tea likes HAYWIRE!!!! We were trying to download DANCE DESIRE...i can only find it via CABLE hahahahha)

i went and bought more office supplies today at STAPLES. I use OFFICE SUPPLIES to organize all my book stuff. Ben gave me some nice file folders, too.

"Please Don't Be One Of Those People Who Just Turns Away"

We lost
we lost
we lost

i was just watching a movie that had torturing in it - which i can't stand more than ANYTHING (even though Sayid (previous job: Torturor) is one of my favourite Lost characters - for his consistency, intelligence, grace, remorse, survival skills and capability to act by his intuition (plus he is romantic)). It's that movie um..Rendition with Reese (I want to do important work) Witherspoon and jake donnie darko. it was okay. i wanted to turn it off and go to bed but i was sewing a bunny - and i have to keep working right now. Bleak..but it's not like Full Metal Jacket-bleak. I begged for that movie to be turned off.
I watched The Diving Bell and the Butterfly last night at the film fest. It didn't make me sad even though it is a very sad story.
This is like one of those notes in high school where your friend reads your writing that says: sorry this is so boring.
hahah. but i do need to go to sleep now.
love
sonja