an old writer and his words

  • MORNING BECOMES

    We awaken and look at each other as though we are meeting for the first time. Your eyes seem new to me, but well remembered, a place I have often been, which is always new, always where I want to go, from which I want to never return. I trace your chin, your shoulder-blade, and…

    Lou Faber

  • NO TWO

    If you ask me whether a dog has Buddha nature, I will stare back at you in total silence. If you ask again, or implore an answer, I will smile at you, offer gassho and a bow. If you ask yet again, I will turn away and you will be left with a box into…

    Lou Faber

  • DISEMBARKING NARITA

    You disembark quickly a small bow to the flight crew, and walk briskly to immigration. The young man glances at your passport and embarkation card hands flying with the stamps. The baggage is offloaded onto the creeping segmented belt yours the fifth through the heavy plastic flaps hefted onto the cart. The customs agent pauses…

    Lou Faber

  • AS THE CROW FLIES

    Leaving the fields of the countryside for the city, it is the birds that tell you when the invisible boundary has been crossed. There are usually signs along the roads bolted to steel poles but the birds know better. In the country, birds sing long arias to the day, to cornstalks making the slow green…

    Lou Faber

  • GENSHA’S BLANK PAPER 鐵笛倒吹 四十九

    If you ask me to write on paper all that I know of zen I will hand to you three empty sheets. Study them carefully for upon them the Dharma waits to be seen. I will draw you a circle almost complete a bounded space having neither inside nor outside, another gateless gate. A reflection…

    Lou Faber

  • ERGO COGITO

    She says she is certain she exists, much as she is certain he exists as well. He says, she thinks she exists, thinks he does as well.                                                  Descartes, he says, was…

    Lou Faber

  • TRICKSTER

    He imagines what it might be like to come down out of the foothills and roam the mesa, unseen unless he wishes, a complete freedom. And even if he chooses to be seen, he can take whatever shape he wishes, and they would see him only as he chose, for only as long as he…

    Lou Faber

  • A FLOCK

    The cranes slowly gather one upon another upon still another, wings unfurled, invoking senbazuru, each one of a whole, each threatening to fly off in ten directions, and none. Still others, sit around, patiently awaiting completion of their senbazuru, uncertain of, uncaring for, its arrival.

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT CHANGES

    Night alters sound in ways we can never precisely determine. It is possible our hearing changes with the flight of the sun, but the moon scoffs at this premise. A train rattling across the landscape in the heat of day becomes a musical instrument in the relative silence of night, playing a melody that insuates…

    Lou Faber

  • ARDEIDAE MORNING

    He stands still staring at the ever changing surface of the pond, which he knows holds infinite possibility that he does not wish to disturb, lest the moment be forever lost. Nothing else matters to him as he calmly, and ever so slowly, lifts his leg in tree pose, and reaches out with unfurled wings…

    Lou Faber