an old writer and his words

  • HOFUKU’S TEMPLE 鐵笛倒吹 語十一

    Standing outside the Temple there is much to see. Enter the Temple zendo prostrate three times before the golden Buddha what do you see? Can you see nothing? Outside the Temple, Buddha inside the Temple, Buddha but only when you see nothing. Outside the mind, nothing, inside the mind, nothing. All Buddha. A reflection on…

    Lou Faber

  • YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED

    I received the invitation today, but I won’t be attending. I’m not inclined to RSVP, for that will only drive home the fact that I couldn’t afford to attend. They have to know this, and if they don’t, well… That really is their problem. My mother said you should always RSVP, yes or no, but…

    Lou Faber

  • RETURNING

    Time has no role to play in any of this. Time isn’t pleased by the prospect, it prefers to be ever present, ever escaping, even as it is arriving. It is quirky that way. It is constant yet it loves to give the impression of being variable. Einstein noted this, and anyone returning from a…

    Lou Faber

  • GOING ON THIRTEEN

    He is four, has been for five months now, but when you ask them how old he will be at his next birthday he doesn’t pause, says, “thirteen,” with a smile that shouts, “yes I know how to count quite well, but sometimes I just choose not to!” He is slowing down, actually, the last…

    Lou Faber

  • Maximum Exposure

    She carefully hangs her life on the tautly stretched line across her small back yard. A sun faded floral housedress a pair of bib overalls knees worn white on the kitchen linoleum, cracked and dingy. She waits patiently for Humphrey Bogart to arrive and carry her up the river of her memory. The chicken threatens…

    Lou Faber

  • FESTIVAL

    They ebb and flow like tides down the half-empty street from venue to venue, many with that lost look of years in the desert, driven on by promised the land of honey notes, the mother’s milk of jazz. The event passes flap in the breeze created by their wake, some checking programs, their personal map…

    Lou Faber

  • A MEETING OF THIEVES

    The squirrel on the lawn stood, his little eyes boring into me as I stepped out of the front door. He threw out his chest, and I half expected him to beat on it with his forepaws, a rodent Tarzan. I, of course, had no choice but to stare back at him defiantly, making clear…

    Lou Faber

  • TOZAN’S THREE BASKETS 鐵笛倒吹 四十一

    Tozan said the whole of knowledge can be expressed in a single letter. Hakuun, the great Master set to writing verse. You, who hold the brush with shaking hand, what will you write in answer to Tozan. Think carefully of each stroke and imagine Joshu’s endless smile. A reflection on case 41 of the Iron…

    Lou Faber

  • AMONG THE MISSING

    We can sit for a time, and speak of our pains, how they cause us to stop and look inward while the world proceeds on it’s axis, in a slow march through time and space, and we share the anger and anguish of our too fallible bodies which time reclaims in slow progression. We do…

    Lou Faber

  • THE LIST

    I am compiling a list, ever so slowly, of places I still want to visit, and you may be surprised to find that Paris, London and Madrid are nowhere to be found. It isn’t that they lack beauty, charm and countless things to see and do, it is simply that they have been usurped by…

    Lou Faber