an old writer and his words

  • TOZAN’S GOING BEYOND BUDDHA

    The greatest speech is given only when the mouth falls shut. To talk of peace is to be at war with peace, to speak of war is to be at war. When listening disappears peace re-emerges, when peace emerges the listener appears. A relection on case 12 of the Shobogenzo (Dogen’s True Dharma Eye)

    Lou Faber

  • NOTELESS

    He says, “I write songs without music, my head is a libretto warehouse.” She says, “You string words like random beads, no two strands the same.” He says, “Symmetry is for those with linear minds, who can’t see out of the tunnel.” She said, “Dysentery is a disease to be avoided particularly by poets.” He…

    Lou Faber

  • REFLECTING

    There was a time, once, when in the mirror I saw a young face, but the smile then is the same as that of the old man who greets me early every morning.

    Lou Faber

  • THE MATTER OF TIME

    Time is a construct, the logic of which is inescapable to be sure, and yet we constantly seek to escape, but the exit is just beyond the distant horizon. We are on the edge of finding the God particle, and somewhere in time Higgs is threatening to smile, for once found, time will cease to…

    Lou Faber

  • FORETELLING

      The chill foretells winter much as birth foretells death but for humans there is only the spring of childhood.

    Lou Faber

  • PRECISELY

      On the radio this morning the DJ played the classic “In the Midnight Hour,” and I pause to reflect on the fact that midnight is a moment and cannot be an hour, by definition, since the halfway is only a point, not a range, and you cannot put a home on an hour, for…

    Lou Faber

  • CHANGES TOMORROW

    Tomorrow will arrive as each day before it: it will snow or not snow, rain or not rain or be sunny or perhaps some combination. At this time tomorrow darkness will settle in and the clouds, if there are any will shroud the moon if there is any, and, if not the street light outside…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE CALLS 鐵笛倒吹 三十九

    If your name is called how do you answer? If it is called again and then again, will your answer always be exactly the same, or will you grow angry and deny even yourself? Surely your teacher knows who you are but knowing yourself, that is the highest mountain you will be asked to climb.…

    Lou Faber

  • HEART OF NIGHT

    The morphology of dreams is partially reliant on the whims of a single god, and Morpheus is, to say the least, a truly fickle bastard who dangles before us joy and nightmare each always just out of reach, but never out of sight or hearing. So we are left to grasp like marionettes operated by…

    Lou Faber

  • QUANTUM DREAMS

    Tonight the Higgs boson stayed virtual and utterly massless and didn’t decay, so only the cookies acted on our teeth and that decay will fall within the Schwarzchild radius of the sink with all six flavors of quark and all their colors.

    Lou Faber