an old writer and his words

  • TEINEI-SA 丁寧さ

    He crawls out from under the blue tarp strung between two trees and a park bench with the first light of morning breaking over Shinjuku Chuo park, slowly erasing the shadows cast by the Metropolitan Government Building. He neatens the surrounding concrete, ready for the soon to be arriving crowd that appear each morning for…

    Lou Faber

  • ESCAPE PLAN

    Open the door quickly for you may find a wonderland: a bottled djinn waiting for your wish, a mangy dog looking for scraps his fur wet and matted, head down. Open the door quickly – it may be the entrance to a gallery or another door, and another until you are outside and must open…

    Lou Faber

  • FADING DREAMS

    Autumn perches on the thin edge of Winter a breeze will blow it into the eternal freeze. The burning bush is aflame, threatening to consume itself for a final time. The earthworm peers at the ashen sky knowing this day brings the world to an end. A squirrel drags a final nut into hiding his…

    Lou Faber

  • SUN-FACED BUDDHA, MOON-FACED BUDDHA

    Life is joy and pain, two sides, one coin – death is caused by birth – stop and consider this. Look into the face of the evening sun, will it retreat from your eyes or linger in memory? Look into the face of the full midnight moon, does she have the sun’s face only until…

    Lou Faber

  • HIERARCHY

    The buildings, great towers overlook the city. The hills, torn from the earth, peer down at the towers lights twinkling. The stars, sliding across the dome of night, watch over the hills. The child, for whom all is wonder, grasps the stars in small fingers.

    Lou Faber

  • DUAL SINGULARITY

    Stare at white sand surrounding the polished stone, listen to the earth. The stone knows no pain falling to the pond’s bottom, ripples comfort it.

    Lou Faber

  • HOPI DREAMING

    Look to the East stare at the sky and feel the winds carry away the snow which paints our lands and shrouds our ancestors in a mantle of white. Look to the South see the waters of the river flowing gently to the horizon bringer of the fish spirits, its azure waters washing away to…

    Lou Faber

  • THOUGHT HARBOR

    I harbored the thought one day becoming a monk, and not only because saffron robes would be well within my usual color choices. I knew it was a pipe dream, I love, too deeply, to disavow, life and I’m sure my past lives wouldn’t take all that long to catch up with me, karma can…

    Lou Faber

  • AT THE BORDER

    Out at the edge of the universe, time has no beginning and stretches endlessly, as a stone dropped, its ripples spreading outward across a shoreless lake. There is no time here at the margin, no space consumed by all space. I would touch the edge and press it outward disrupting balance until it all draws…

    Lou Faber

  • OCTOBER

    There is an infinite space inside an atom, a massive void into which universes tumble and stars and planets are born. Outside, the maple leaves burning flame and crimson spiral to the lawn, which waits to receive them. Autumn is the season when the earth prepares to die and it is left to us to…

    Lou Faber