an old writer and his words

  • OLD MEN

    It is always odd watching older men gather, talk about their lives, about how much they no longer remember, of last year, and a decade ago, about the infinite details they can clearly recall about the time they spent in the Army, Navy, Air Force, the smell of Slop-on-a-shingle, of field stripped butts in a…

    Lou Faber

  • TIPPING THE WATER BOTTLE 無門關 四十

      These few words gathered neatly on a scrap of simple paper, what do you call it? Answer carefully for you response may carry the keys to the doors of Mount Tai-i. Better still, upend the water bottle, watch the ink and water form a gentle pool into which no pebble drops. A reflection on…

    Lou Faber

  • DOING THOUGHT TIME

        The hardest prison to escape is the one whose walls are built by the mind in fear and trepidation. It is like the open gate you dare not enter fearing that you are leaving and will not be allowed to return. Atop a pole there are an infinite number of directions in which…

    Lou Faber

  • TIMING IS . . .

      The sweep of the second-hand, the minute hand is constant, each moment as long as the last, none longer, none shorter and yet I know that Einstein was right in noting that things unpleasant take forever, while all that is joyful passes quickly even when the elapsed time is the same. What Albert didn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • IF

    It is never if – we have no control over that, and if we did, we wouldn’t be able to control the when and the how. And if that weren’t enough, if we need if so badly, why are we so often completely uncertain what would happen if not.

    Lou Faber

  • LOST, AGAIN

    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

  • NANSEN’S REJECTIONS 鐵笛倒吹 四十四

      If you come before Master Nansen, will you come holding the posture of a monk or a lay person, and when Nansen turns you away, how will you exit the room? Nested hands and gassho hands – both are so easily manacled – why leave the room at all? A reflection on case 44…

    Lou Faber

  • THE TRICKSTER RESPONDS

    The man liked to cry out into the night, asking questions for which he knew there could be no answers, or if there were, they would be things he would never wish to hear. The coyotes in the hills would listen to his pleas, his entreaties, his moaning, and they would remember the spirits of…

    Lou Faber

  • SLIPPING AWAY

    Each day I am certain something more slips away, forgotten, no longer able to be recalled, lost in the vast abyss of yesterdays. I would like to think this happens because something new, something better has taken its place, and I had no choice but to displace it. That is the convenient story I tell…

    Lou Faber

  • BUDDHIST RELATIVITY

    Now then, he says, and at once he is again victim of the confusion that he spreads in his wake. She takes him to task again, but he protests that what was now is clearly then, now, and this now, too, is now then, for each now is gone in the time it takes to…

    Lou Faber