This is the first installment of a series of excerpts from Kyoto Dreaming to appear in Michi Online. Kyoto Dreaming is author Wayne Muromoto's semi-autobiographical vision, yet everyone has a dream that they need to chase at least once in a lifetime. But what if it's the dream that pursues you?

Kyoto Dreaming chronicles the engaging account of Mr. Muromoto's sojourn to Kyoto, in search of the Ways of tea ceremony (chado) and martial arts (budo). There, he discovers the meaning of the Way itself and the austere shugyo practices found in all the Japanese arts. But while traveling along the Way, he must face not only his dreams, but his nightmares as well. And the woman who steals his heart away.

Mr. Muromoto is now considering offers from publishers. If you're interested in possibly publishing Kyoto Dreaming, the author can be contacted via Michi Online.

--Editor

Michi
The Way

hen does a bright, shining moment change the path of your life? Can we always tell when destiny decides to grab you by the balls and jerk you along its rocky way to a conclusion that, had you taken another fork in the road, would have brought you to a totally different conclusion? Or does it happen quietly, like the silence that wraps around the foam of green tea being whisked to a froth in a deep black raku bowl?

I had never thought much about that, nor did I even imagine that life had indeed any supposed karmic unfolding, in spite of my varied religious upbringing-my Christian parents had sent me to various Buddhist churches because they wanted me to learn Japanese, a common enough practice among that generation of Japanese Americans in Hawai'i, and there were the Christian missionaries who preached to us neighborhood kids in my backyard every weekend, and a summer spent at a Baptist school-for me, life was a series of stumbles and gropings in the dark. Dorky mistakes and odd, lucky happenstances.