Sometimes a rainstorm reminds me to sit in easy solitude as you have shown me. They might assume you were once a bohemian clown with squash blossoms braided around your ankles, the way you lean back and cross your legs, bringing that demitasse cup to your lips, followed by a forkful of smoked cheddar omeletContinue reading “Sometimes A Rainstorm”
Author Archives: C.M. Rivers
Poseidon
Dear Diary, rainy morning, early, dreary. The light coming through the water’s surface was the loveliest I’ve seen. I’m exhausted, drained. Aphrodite took it all out of me, then she took me on a wooden ship and showed me the absurdities of Men. Now the mermaids are upon me again, but this time my hairContinue reading “Poseidon”
Six Thoughts On Mary Oliver
Mary, who helps us remember tenderness when we find an insect on our pillow, or a bat in the house. Mary, who reminds us of a hundred walks in the wilderness, even as we stare at lamp-lit sheetrock and worry about work. Mary, who tells us what we knew the moment we were born but have forgotten. Mary, who makes us feel less aloneContinue reading “Six Thoughts On Mary Oliver”
Constance
Here’s a little something I wrote in honor of my high school English teacher, Constance Person. It was a big class in a big high school in the big city, and I was terrified of being called upon. I was a shy country mouse who was used to small classes in a small school inContinue reading “Constance”
A Child’s Christmas in Oregon
In our little country house in the sopping-wet Willamette valley winter, heat radiated from the woodstove as my mother rubbed a cast-iron pan back and forth upon it, one hand holding a lid down tight to make popcorn the old-fashioned way. I’d lay on the floor and play with the cat, listening to my mom’sContinue reading “A Child’s Christmas in Oregon”
Henry Miller (from Tropic of Cancer)
“I was permitted to hear an incredible music…I heard the gestation of the new world…the sound of stars grinding and chafing, of fountains clotted with blazing gems….Music is planetary fire, an irreducible which is all sufficient; it is the slate-writing of the gods.” -Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer
“The amuse-bouche is the best way for a great chef to express his big ideas in small bites.” -Jean-Georges Vongerichten
“I’ve always just wanted to earn my living by writing. The best thing is to go into my study in the morning and put words together.” -Robert Harris
“It often took me a full morning to write a paragraph.” –Ernest Hemingway
C.M. Rivers 