an old writer and his words

  • DEPARTED

    Catherine Camden is quite dead, so secure in her peace that her parting has faded and all that remains is her name, and that too, will soon be gone as she was, slowly devoured by the winds. The white swans on the Thames pay her no notice.

    Lou Faber

  • BUT FEAR ITSELF

    He only wants to know , he says what she fears most,what is her phobia, everyone has at least one, he claims. She thinks about this for a while then smiles and says her one true fear is called phobophobia, and that she says positively terrorizes her. He looks confused and she sees it. I…

    Lou Faber

  • UNKO SENDS CLOTHES 鐵笛倒吹 七十八

    If I receive warm under robes to ease my winter meditation I will refuse them. If you ask me why, I will say I was born with such robes as I need. If you ask what I wore before birth I shall remain silent. In the deepest winter there is no chill that can reach…

    Lou Faber

  • STARING

    She stares at you, unwavering. You find this strange, wanting to see something more in her looks, but you get nothing from her, as you have gotten nothing from so many others before her. You know men are as capable of such stares as she, but you don’t tend to see them, your own gender…

    Lou Faber

  • APPROACHING WINTER

    We are in the season of stasis where nothing wants to move and nothing should shed the mantle of snow that has announced winter’s arrival in terms we full understand, as do the finches clinging to the feeder casting nervous glances skyward. The neighbor’s cat has decided that the remote chance of catching a bird…

    Lou Faber

  • ALOFT

    As a child I often flew kites, which is to say that I ran haphazardly pulling a string and dragging a wood frames paper rhombus across the park. My father laughed until seeing me on the edge of tears he took up the string and dragged the kite across the park. One day a strong…

    Lou Faber

  • THOU SHALT NOT

    “I don’t want to” is hardly a sagacious way to run a country and “just because” probably didn’t work when you were a child, why would you think adults would accept it now? And when we all expressed our displeasure, disdain and contempt, which part of “no” did you have trouble grasping, Mr. President? The…

    Lou Faber

  • ANCESTORS

    He clearly remembers standing on the edge peering down into the almost bottomless canyon, listening to the narrow river slide across the rocks thrown down by its walls over millennia. He was a visitor here, knew he would stay only briefly, then leave, his spirit hiding among the rocks in the nearby mountains, staring down…

    Lou Faber

  • MOMENT

    If you are patient and do not look for it, there is a still moment in each day when nothing at all happens, when the silence without demands a silence within, when thoughts evaporate like the mist of an early morning dew, when you have precisely enough and cannot imagine needing more, when where you…

    Lou Faber

  • BODHIDHARMA’S VAST EMPTINESS

    If you go walking one day and meet a person you think may be the Buddha, ask him what is the heart of all of the sutras. If he answers you with Dharma will you be certain this person is not the Buddha? If, on the other hand, he says nothing at all, and merely…

    Lou Faber