ELLENSBURG, WA-

Can a man truly change his life using reason as his guide? Or is the only way to break yourself in two?

My situation came from this basic fact-filled sentence: I was twenty-four, a tennis teaching pro living in Buffalo with three other graduate students when I decided to move to Japan.

The thought made me smile. Japan…Japan…but it wasn’t the rational thought of moving to another country, learning another language, another culture, that made me smile. It was the sheer insanity of it.

I knew nothing about Japan. Absolutely nothing.

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ELLENSBURG, WA-

Way back, when I was innocent, I sat in the church balcony with my grandmother every Sunday and listened to old men tell me I was going to hell.  At least I felt that way.  They were serious, finger-pointing authorities with heavy robes and they spoke from a big book written by God.  I was twelve, and the authorities I chose to listen to were a boy a named Calvin and a tiger named Hobbes.  

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