an old writer and his words

  • PROGRESSION

    It is between the pushing away in the pulling back that it happens. It is there that the seasons progress, one to the next. Winter cedes to spring and is, ever reluctantly, replaced by summer. It is there, as well, that the leaf emerges from the bud and reaches into the sky. And feeling the…

    Lou Faber

  • PACIFYING THE MIND OF THE SECOND PATRIARCH

    Sitting on the cushion staring at the wall yet again, the wall seems familiar, as if you should know it, the paint, the fleck of something embedded in the paint. Still you search for something beyond the wall, hidden by the paint, but you find nothing, always nothing. Does this nothing finding frustrate you? Are…

    Lou Faber

  • TEN DIRECTIONS

    It would help, she said, if you would stop thinking of yourself as Sisyphus and all of life as the rock. You might actually, one day, begin to enjoy what you do. It would help, he said, if I could be like a great blue heron, grow wings and take to a summer sky leaving…

    Lou Faber

  • THEOI HALIOI ARE NOT HAPPY

    For reasons no one can explain, we have always assumed the gods of the sea have it in for us, witness shipwrecks and storms, and the too occasional tsunami. We assume they are a petulant lot, given to fits of pique and with a means of expression of that pique certainly denied to mere mortals.…

    Lou Faber

  • TS’UI YEN’S EYEBROWS

    The question is a simple one, really, but not one you were expecting, which is why you sit and grapple for an answer. Ask yourself, what if no answer is needed, what if there is no answer, can you remain silent, or will you feel somehow incomplete if you do not respond? All answers are…

    Lou Faber

  • NATURE’S PROPHET

    He sits still demanding your attention. He stares at you with green eyes and a defiant look, saying you are a visitor here, this is our world so do not abuse your privilege of sharing this space with us. We were here long before you arrived and our kind will be here long after you…

    Lou Faber

  • ASHES TO DUST

    The dolphin is born of the water, the man born of the fire and of the earth. The dolphin swims unrestrained, the man chooses to live in the city of Afterlife, focussed on impending rebirth. The dolphin stares up in wonder at the amassing clouds, the man curses the sky shielding him from heaven. The dolphin…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE HAIKU

    Giant cranes are perched on thin spindly legs, necks bowed steel beams scratch the clouds. Needle-like church spires reach through the gathering mist clouds begin to bleed. Walls stand in the field one stone piled on another grass withers in shade.

    Lou Faber

  • MOURNING ASCENDANT

    When they lowered my grandmother’s casket into the sodden earth, there wasn’t a dry eye or shoulder, or leg around. Sophie would have gotten a good laugh, her children always too busy for a visit getting soaked to the skin, in a cold, windy downpour, all but me, the one she chose to conduct the…

    Lou Faber

  • KANGNAM STYLE

    The kimchi and pickles are presented in neat Celadon dishes carefully arranged on the small table. The meat sizzles on the iron dome resting above the bucket of orange hot coals set into the table littered with half empty and fully drained bottles of Hite beer and thimble glasses of Soju. The waitress snips the…

    Lou Faber