an old writer and his words

  • COLORS

    We hunted him as a trophy stag across his fields. We called him red man, color of Ares, gods sacrificed on our altar. His rivers run with his spirit. I am white bereft of color, barren, a glare, a dessert stripped of life. It is I who wears Cain’s mark, plucked from the garden the…

    Lou Faber

  • BELIEF

    He will tell you he’s agnostic, once he would’ve set atheist, but put to the test, he knows he couldn’t disprove the existence of that which could not be seen. He believes it will, must, get better eventually, he has infinite faith that it will, he says to anyone who will listen, in faith is…

    Lou Faber

  • LITTLE LESS THAN GODS

    It hardly seems all that long ago when we were immortal, when we measured our days by the number of dares we undertook, each with its own level of stupidity which we took, mistakenly, for courage. We are older now, we would like to think far wiser as well, but the line between truth and…

    Lou Faber

  • SEPPO’S PUNCTUALITY 鐵笛倒吹 二十六

    You ask me how I know when to begin my sitting so it will be the right time. It is easy to watch the sun and stars for they clearly know. You ask what I do when the sky is black with impenetrable clouds, it is easy to watch the clouds. Water from the stream…

    Lou Faber

  • THE MIDDLE WAY

    George Harrison said that if you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there, and on reflection it was obvious he was correct.. Today, rising from the cushion, the four vows recited, Buddha put back on his small altar, Harrison’s words echoed loudly for he understood in a moment what it…

    Lou Faber

  • THE LADIES

    It is an ungainly beast and its cry, as much a bleat as a roar, can pierce the air and is never easily ignored. There are far larger to be found, and far more beautiful. Some have voices that melt anger incite passion, alleviate pain. Some sing in a register so low touch and hearing…

    Lou Faber

  • MORNING

    It is late morning and with five hours sleep I am renting my fourth cup of coffee I look forward to night.

    Lou Faber

  • REMEMBERING ANOTHER FATHER

    It was scrawled on the back of a grocery receipt, barely legible. Charles H. Boustead Tunnel, fryingpan river. The river is lower case, its capitals dangling by serifs in one of the tunnel grates that constricts the water’s flow. Outside the full moon is ensnared in the gnarled, barren branches of the white birch. She…

    Lou Faber

  • TRES PIEDRAS

    We remember the oddest moments of life, the tragedies, the occasional comedy, but mostly the unusual moments that etch themselves into memory in ways you would not have expected. Driving along the mostly deserted road, a moonless night, or nearly so, the Mesa cold and forbidding, not at all reminiscent of the birth to be…

    Lou Faber

  • DEAD OR JUST RESTING?

    Some people say religion is dead, or at least mortally wounded. In my generation, closer to death than puberty, there is some truth to that thought because God seems a whole lot less responsive these days, our peers beginning to fall like lemmings from the cliff. But the young clearly have found what has gotten…

    Lou Faber