an old writer and his words

  • TWO JOURNEYS THROUGH THE GATE

    Tosotsu’s Three Barriers          無門關 四十七 Before you sit Tosotsu’s three mountains how will you traverse them, legless on your zafu? Look within your mind, search diligently, for when you find nothing, all is laid out before you. Confuse life and death for one is the other, the other the one. Search…

    Lou Faber

  • THIEF

    The sea steals the edge of the shore, replacing it with something familiar and yet different. It is much the same with the waves of sleep that eat away at dreams leaving fractured memories and holes left to fill with desire and imagination. Walking along the shore of dawn and awakening, I feel time creep…

    Lou Faber

  • A CONVERSATION

    She said, “You’re breaking my heart,” as though it was a small twig which, stepped upon, splinters with a small pop, pieces flying in opposition, lost on the forest floor, waiting patiently for the next errant step to further subdivide until the bits are indistinguishable and slowly rot into the soil. I said, “My emotions…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHTWAY TOKYO

    It is well into the Season When Thunder Sleeps and the crowds no longer snaked through  Shinjuku Park where even the stones were in quiet hibernation. The sun fell quickly sucking away the light bringing the sleep of dreams and nightmares, of love and terror and despair. The night chant began for yet another night…

    Lou Faber

  • CRADLING NIGHT

    Last night the moon hid daring the stars to give chase across the void but they preferred their slow procession. I looked long, hard for her but she was master of this game. I looked for her behind the neon signs blazing from countless buildings electric grave stones marking the resting place of peace on…

    Lou Faber

  • TENT CITY

    From my window on the twenty-sixth floor they appear as so many blue roofs, arranged in small villages in Shinjuku-Chuo Park below. At 6:30 in the morning many older Japanese gather in sweater vests and hats despite the humidity to perform the tai chi ritual. Nearby hands and feet emerge from blue tarp tents crammed…

    Lou Faber

  • IMPERMANENCE

    In this moment there is, and can be, no other. And when the moment is gone it never existed, much as the next will never exist. So it is with us, a reflection of the ripple of the long sunk stone now nestling the bottom of the pond.

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING

    Morning would find him sitting calmly, cross-legged, under the apple tree that sat on the edge of the park. He would stare up at a small branch and carefully watch the bud begin to open, ignoring all who passed. Morning would find him sitting calmly, cross-legged, under the apple tree watching the fragile blossom open,…

    Lou Faber

  • TRANSFORMATION

    There was a time, once, when the most everything was metaphorical. That was before the great metamorphosis when everything was suddenly malleable. No one was quite certain just what happened. Most thought it was in the dead of night when they, and most everyone else was firmly in the grip of Morpheus, who was, all…

    Lou Faber

  • DROP IT

    It is a burden he does not want to bear any longer, one he would shed in a moment, but there is no place to put it and you cannot just leave it anywhere. And so he continues to bear it dragging it here, carrying it there, always attached to it, and it to him.…

    Lou Faber