Archive for the ‘Best’ Category
January 19th, 2014 by Corey A. Edwards
This collection of vignettes, observances, and rants accumulated over a four day period in Charleston, South Carolina where I was employed as a vendor at a trade show.
I don’t travel much. This is my first trip in that direction: approximately six hours in the air, southeast with a connection in Atlanta. It’s the farthest south I’ve been on the east coast, maybe on the continent.
Anyway: stuck on a plane, stuck in a hotel room, stuck in a booth, and stuck in my head, the urge to document and rant came. Short of screaming to the heavens, I felt the need to express myself, so into my phone and computer the impressions and observances went – mostly as they happened or shortly thereafter.
Now, with only the slightest of apologies, I present them to you.
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Tags: Charleston, Mr. K's Used Books, Seatac to Atlanta, Seattle to Charleston, South Carolina
Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
October 7th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Outside a rarely-used side-door in our basement, there is a concrete stairwell that spends a good part of the year damp and mossy. It gets afternoon sun, if there is any, and because of this, it dries up and stays that way throughout the bulk of the summer months but, autumn to spring, it’s a pretty moist environment.
There is a drain in the bottom landing of this stairway: a hole covered by a round, metal grate tucked halfway under the concrete facade of one wall. Our neighbors live here: Taricha granulosa – rough-skinned newts.
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Tags: Animated Gif, endangered newts, newts Olympic Peninsula, newts pacific northwest, newts WA, poisonous newts, rough skinned newts, Taricha granulosa
Posted in Best, Nature | No Comments »
September 12th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
[*note – this story was originally called “Ants and Hornets” – I have since realized these are yellow jackets, not hornets – very likely Vespula pennsylvanica – the ants look to be Formica obscuripes]
The other day I was out on the property with my daughter, hanging out beneath the arch of a tree and the hollow of some bushes: a little hideout where I keep a chair for quiet, measured snippets of novel now and again.
Anyway, I was there as I said, chatting with my daughter, when she pointed out a dark hole in the ground.
“Yellow jacket’s nest,” she said. “I wont sit in here, they’re all over.”
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Tags: ants, Formica obscuripes, insects, Vespula pennsylvanica, yellow jackets, yellowjackets
Posted in Best, Nature | No Comments »
August 26th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Big Dam Falls at Chasteen’s Grove
In the summer of 1976, when I was 7 years old, the river I lived near – The Big Thompson – suffered a flash flood of unheard of proportions. 143 people lost their lives in the rushing waters, five of whom were never found. My family, though living in the affected area, suffered little but inconvenience and shock as the human world around us reeled from one of nature’s little hiccups.
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Tags: Big Thompson Canyon, Big Thompson Flood 1976, Colorado, Dam Store, Loveland, Loveland Big Dam, Loveland Small Dam
Posted in Autobiography, Best | 6 Comments »
July 18th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
You never stop and
though I love you greatly
it seems that it’s always
what have I done with you lately?
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Posted in Best, Poetry, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »
July 1st, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
It must have been the summer of 1974 or so, I would have been five or six. My maternal grandparents hadn’t seen me since I was a baby, so my mom decided it would be a good time for a visit. We didn’t have a lot of money, though, so it would just be mom and I making the trip, my father and older brother would stay home. As a further expression of our finances, mom and I wouldn’t be flying from Northern Colorado to Southern California but busing.
Being wee, I knew none of the reasons behind why we were going. All I knew was, I was going on a big trip for the first time and I couldn’t wait.
You know you’re young when the prospect of taking a bus from Northern Colorado to Los Angeles with your mom sounds like an exciting adventure.
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Tags: 1970's, Bus, Denver, Greyhound, Harvey Comics, Hippies, Hitchhikers, Los Angeles, Mass Transit, Spooky the Tuff Little Ghost, Trailways
Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
June 24th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
“What happens when you send an atheist to interview a faith healer? You tell me – I can’t watch.”
The house bearing the address I was given is a drab, neglected ranch, the yard littered with assorted dingy vehicles, tarp draped filing cabinets, and abandoned appliances in various states of repair. It is the kind of yard from which vicious dogs leap, not the manicured, peaceful zen garden of a new-age professional.
I exit my vehicle tentative with caution.
What the hell am I doing here? I hate this kind of thing; meeting new people is bad enough but interviewing them for an article in a spiritual newsletter is even worse. When I took the job as webmaster for the local, new-age bookstore, I never intended to have to pay this much lip service to the dizzying array of beliefs that are the store’s bread and butter. I’m a total skeptic, an unrepentant atheist, yet here I am, about to interview what amounts to a new-age faith healer.
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Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
June 3rd, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
“Esther discovers a worm on an old, hated quilt … and then the world.”
The Worms first entered into what you and I would think of as reality through a quasar catalogued as 3C 279. Quasar 3C 279 does not exist for this purpose nor had it been used so prior; it was just handy at the time.
A mere handful of pinkish-gray, banded, larval forms, no more than two centimeters in length, The Worms are more appropriately referred to in the singular for, despite the apparent lack of connection between bodies, “they” are “it” far more than “it” is “they”.
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Tags: science-fiction, worms from space
Posted in Best, Fiction | No Comments »
May 27th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
(Part 1 of “Lost and Foundry” can be found here)
The longer I worked at the foundry, the farther I rose up in ranks – whether I wanted to or not – and it wasn’t just because of my abilities.
First there was the appointment to head of Monument Sprue, a change that mainly involved me going to lots of pointless meetings and wandering around the foundry with a clipboard, talking to friends – not because it was part of the job but because the position and clipboard gave me the excuse and camouflage to do so. Then they allowed me to move to patina and, in short order, made me head of that department.
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Tags: Art Casting, Bronze Art, Foundry, French Brown, Lost Wax Process, Metal Casting, Metal Chasing, Pat Kipper, Patina, Patineur, Sculpting, Sculpture, Silicon Bronze, Victory Brown, Wax Sprue
Posted in Art, Autobiography, Best | 4 Comments »
May 20th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
In the mid 90’s I found myself in a very precarious position: the husband in a married team of new parents, unexpectedly locked out of their business by their silent partners for suspicion of embezzlement.
While this presents a story all on its own, suffice it to say that our business partner’s accusations were eventually discovered to be unfounded (the butler did it) but the damage was done and, in the meantime, I needed work!
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Tags: Art Casting, Bronze Art, Foundry, Life Casting, Lost Wax Process, Metal Casting, Patina, Sculpting, Sculpture, Silicon Bronze, Victory Brown, Wax Sprue
Posted in Art, Autobiography, Best | 2 Comments »
May 6th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Poking about my “writings” folder, I discovered this piece entitled “for after the divorce,” written circa 2006. Intrigued I read it and was stunned by both its honesty and darkness. I knew I wanted to share it but I wasn’t sure why and so I mothballed it again until I understood the urge. There are some uncomfortable moments here and so much has changed in my life – all for the better! – why dredge up the clotted ichor of the past?
I eventually realized that the urge to share it had to do with the realization that we are so often capable of pulling ourselves out of the deepest and darkest places. Very shortly after this was written – a few months or more – I started that elusive career and, though my marriage did fall apart and even harder times were to come, it was an adventure that has led me to the amazing place I am now.
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Tags: Blood, Divorce, Failure, Rebirth
Posted in Autobiography, Best, Writing | No Comments »
April 29th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Gregg discovers it’s what’s inside that matters … but it’s up to Emmy to clean up the mess.
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Tags: Bizarre, Blood, Fantasy, Food
Posted in Best, Fiction | 1 Comment »
February 18th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Retail records, Jewish guilt, and Russians from Sequim
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Tags: Heavy Metal, Incompetence, Music, Records, Retail, Russians, Sequim
Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
August 9th, 2012 by Corey A. Edwards
A while back I purchased a great little book of Japanese monsters, shown in cross-section, in an attempt to shed a little light upon just what it is that makes them tick.
Great concept. Hours of fun.
The only problem is, the darned thing is all in Japanese! The nerve of these people! (they also made a mistake and printed the whole thing backwards – someone lost his job at the printing house that day, I can tell you)
Anyway, I took it upon myself to decipher those inscrutable little squigglies that littered the page and present to you here the few I manged to get through before passing out with exertion. Phew. My brain. (be sure to click on them for a closer view)
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Tags: Anatomical, Cut-Away, Gamakujira, Garamon, Guts, Innards, Japan, Kaiju, Killazee, Pigmon, Satan Beetle, Sofubi, Ultraman, Viira, Viras
Posted in Best, Graphic Design | 2 Comments »
January 31st, 2012 by Corey A. Edwards
Chapter 12
in which we find our heroes on a precarious ledge over the clown pit
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Tags: Clowns, Fantasy, magic
Posted in Best, Fiction | No Comments »
October 9th, 2011 by Corey A. Edwards
I’m toying with putting a calendar together of composites/distortions I’ve done and, coming up a bit short of the 12 images I need, I started playing with a few of my existing photos.
One of them made an almost immediate impression on me as a surreal scene of biblical, industrial horror. A couple of hours later and we have the scene above: fantastic, unrealistic, yet somehow evoking in me that sense of ecological nightmare.
Vast stretches of steel, concrete and stone, dimly illuminated by artificial light under a toxic sky, with only a few, meager regions left for poorly maintained agriculture to limp along, almost as an afterthought, on the tortured remnants of dry, scratched earth that remain.
Beautiful, aint it? =)
Tags: Fantasy, Illustration
Posted in Best, Graphic Design | No Comments »
June 29th, 2011 by Corey A. Edwards
Summer days stung
with sweet leaf chewing tobacco
the bitter blood of choke cherries
and crisp stalked asparagus purloined
like the shade we find and eat it in
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Tags: 70's, Childhood
Posted in Best, Poetry | 3 Comments »
June 25th, 2011 by Corey A. Edwards
“Are you a racist?”
The question comes from the back of the bus. It is not inflected in the way you might expect: no anger, no indignation, no shock; just a loud, open question that hangs in the air like a heavy curtain pulled between those of us in earshot and our lives of careful make-believe.
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Tags: Public Transit, Racism
Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
May 16th, 2011 by Corey A. Edwards
I come in from weed-whacking the lawn when I hear the scream. It exits the wall to my right and crawls into my ear, ringing there like the buzzing of a little, lost fly.
It is my teenage daughter in the shower.
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Tags: Parenthood
Posted in Autobiography, Best | No Comments »
