memoir
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Digesting Memories: Of Food and Family
“In the archipelago of habitual behavior, sometimes we island-hop, sometimes we get stranded.” Continue reading
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Net Man
“The point is that he had – as we all do in given measures – an unknowable wildness.” Continue reading
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Nine Machetes and an Earring
When I was a boy, one of the things I loved most was a collection of 45-records, passed on to my Grandma Ruth from her dad’s jukebox and pinball machine business Keystone Amusement based in Silverton, a small Oregon town in the Willamette valley an hour’s drive south of Portland. In the 1950’s and 60’s, Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part Three
Western medicine couldn’t heal my body. This realization – and my acceptance of it – slowly sunk into my bones. A couple of months after my last cortisone injection, I tried a “medical yoga” class, a synthesis of restorative yoga and physical therapy intended for injured people, taught by a nurse from the local hospital. Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part Two
Chefs aren’t known for having an abundance of spare time, but for a few years I devoted most of mine to creating a fantasy world (literally) and writing a young adult story set in that world. I’ve long nursed the dream of publishing a novel, to legitimize my lifelong habit of needing acceptance from others Continue reading
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A Path Into Yoga: Part One
The ego-mind lives in fear of so much that cannot be avoided or controlled: change, failure, loss, weakness, judgment, shame, pain, and death. My ego-mind, for instance, does not want you to know that I have a son who I was never there for, because my life was a mess, and I was a mess. Continue reading
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Knick-Knacks
I remember my mom yelling at my dad through the phone, and wondering when I might get to meet him. I remember meeting him, the sound of his laugh, the slope of his shoulder, how he rubbed his feet together at the end of the day, how he took the list my mom had made Continue reading
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Bittersweet: A Portrait of Professional Cooking
The kitchen end of the restaurant business is a fascinating industry to work in, if you’re fascinated with minds warped by the toll of long hours, intense stress, and hearing the same songs ooze out of grease-addled radio speakers. Then there are the bodies attached to those cerebral cortexes – bodies beaten into submission over Continue reading
C.M. Rivers 