This Single Road: Postcards and Notebooks from Kyoto

THIS IS A PRE-ORDER!
PUBLICATION DATE IS SEPTEMBER 23— BOOKS SHIP THAT DAY.

"We spend so much time on trains and subways that I can't resist sneaking in some sketches. I love the ephemeral moment when we as strangers on this earth get to spend mere seconds or minutes together sharing space before dispersing and never meeting again. Maybe it’s my own futile attempt to hold on to that elusive moment in time."

In This Single Road, poet and painter Alan Chong Lau opens his Kyoto journals to us — inexpensive pocket notebooks filled with quick sketches, poems, and fragments of daily life. Many of these moments return as watercolor postcards sent to friends, so what begins in private observation becomes a quiet act of generosity, a way of keeping connection alive through art. Echoing the haibun tradition of Bashō and Santōka, This Single Road is less a travelogue than a record of engagement — intimate and playful — a lifelong conversation with place, with practice, and with Kazuko, his companion in life and art.