It didn’t help that I arrived immediately wanting answers to why I was here, my Civic crammed with clothes and books and dishes and guitar and stuffed animals and yellow LIVESTRONG bands and mardi gras beads. A small sack of wine corks, little blue ceramic tiles and cardboard birds cut off of tissue boxes. Just the essentials, you know.

I must have seemed like some nutcase from the distant country known as Texas. Which in all fairness, perhaps I was.

Sensitive, fragile, afraid, a little overwrought, some difficulty translating thought into speech…

I showed up for Shintaido like a man overboard might approach swimming lessons: I need to know everything, RIGHT NOW!