February 3rd, 2014 by Corey A. Edwards
What do you do when you see a cat? Let’s say a cat in a store window peering out at you, for example? Well, I dunno about you but, when I see a cat, my first urge is usually to go and try and interact with it, the polar opposite of my typical reaction at seeing another person.
So, now that I’ve outed myself as one of *those* people …
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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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January 1st, 2014 by Corey A. Edwards
New York City will attempt to ban any food that doesn’t fit inside a “fun-size” candy bar wrapper.
Phil Robertson of Duck Dynasty will continue to expand his profile of pseudo importance as a spokesperson for the rights of the culturally narrow until his untimely death in a freak beard accident involving squirrels, chewing gum, and a tangle of bailing wire.
Colorado will complete an initial study on the effects of recreational marijuana sales but will be forced to admit, near the end of 2014 and around a mouthful of Skittles, that they lost the results somewhere behind the couch.
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December 7th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
November 7th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
About a month ago, a friend of mine posted on Facebook about someone who had killed themselves in response to their “soul” mate dying. Lot’s of people chimed in about how sad and beautiful it all was.
But I had to be a dick about it. You see, I can’t romanticize it – I hate suicide.
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October 10th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
[continued from Working at Cross-Purposes (pt. 2)]
I’m the kind of person who always has a host of mid-process projects cluttering the corners of both their home and mind. Some of these projects are just dormant seeds I squirrel away for decades at a time. Others blossom more quickly … and some stall.
The devotional cabinet and crucifix lay in hibernation for almost a year.
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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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September 28th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
[continued from Working at Cross-Purposes (pt. 1)]
There must be something about autumn because, here I am, a year later, back on this project.
As mentioned in the first part of this rambling, incoherent stream of blasphemy, after finishing the crucifix project, I became more and more aware that I wasn’t done, yet, that the crucifix was just one small part of a larger piece.
How was I to know, that fateful day when I picked up the chunky, wooden crucifix with the corny, plastic corpus on it from the shelf at Goodwill, that it would lead to me building a devotional cabinet?
Well it did.
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September 26th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
September 16th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
I have today off
tomorrow but it’s
tomorrow’s yesterday
I’m on
and perhaps
this is the reason
all the future’s past
ain’t gone
I could spend
about an hour
contemplating all
this on my lawn
until the past’s
coming tomorrow
is my yesterday
yet gone
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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September 9th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
The present “view” at Big Dam (circa 2010)
(continued from: A Flood of Memories – Part 2 The Big Thompson Flood of 1976)
The river changed for me after the flood and, to this day, it is not the one I remember from my early childhood. The river we ice-skated on in the winter and that I caught my first fish from, on a piece of black thread with a rusty, found hook is long gone. A hazy but persistent memory that continues to define a very distinct and distant period of my life.
Floods update the shape and course of the rivers they spring from. The rushing water carves new beds from old banks, uproots foliage, rolls boulders, and deposits new layers of mud and sand where before, perhaps, there was none. Floods remove old landmarks and create new ones. Floods destroy human built landmarks and redefine how and where it is wise to place them.
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September 2nd, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
A car peeping out from its impromptu grave – Ernie Leyba/Denver Post File
(continued from: A Flood of Memories – Part 1 The Big Thompson Flood of 1976)
The next day dawned and, from my perspective, nothing was different – but it was.
We had no power and there was a queer smell in the air, a smell of mud and propane. After being told of the evening’s events, my mom allowed my brother and I to walk down to the corner above the falls with the stern admonishment to avoid the edge of the washed out road. We were to go no further than the falls.
Later that day we learned why my mom had been so adamant that we explore no more than what we could see from the road: two of of our neighbors had investigated the scene below the falls already that morning and had reported finding, among other things, a nude woman asleep in the silt.
Except, of course, she wasn’t asleep.
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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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August 15th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
August 12th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
Click for some primitive Flash-iness.
August 8th, 2013 by Corey A. Edwards
detail of unfinished piece, acrylic on canvas 3′ x 2′
I’ve never really indulged my painting urge. I yearn off and on for the capacity and thus, occasionally dabble but it remains one of those things least often attended to in my panoply of petty distractions. Maybe four short, concentrated periods prior to this one. As I’ve mentioned too many times before, I grew up feeling incapable of art and something about painting terrifies me.
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