an old writer and his words

  • MY SORT OF SISTER

    I don’t remember her crib,but it was probably the one that Ihad only recently outgrown, butthe wood was polished pine,the rails topped with plasticthat I had dented with some cribtoy or other, the mattress soft,a mobile hanging off the end.She cried a lot at first, and mothersaid that was what babies did,but she said I…

    Lou Faber

  • INSTAHELL OR METAHELL?

    Some might call us linguistic sadistsand it would be difficult to argue that point.We take a perverse joy in torturing language,as though trying to make it agree with whatwe imagine it should do in our delusional world.And I am willing (and quite able) to lay someof the blame on social media, that baneof modern existence…

    Lou Faber

  • SUIGAN’S EYEBROWS

    If you sitwith two teachersand ask themto explain the Dharmaeach may givea different answer.Both are right,both are wrong.Which do you believe?Does it matter? A reflection on Case 71 of The Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)

    Lou Faber

  • NOTHING TO FEAR BUT

    He knew his emotions swunglike a pendulum in an everwidening arc, and that centralto the swings was the pit of fearon the precipice of whichhe found himself yet again.Some days it was the fear of rejection,that was a practiced reality for himyet never less intensely painful.Other days it was the fear of acceptancefor with that…

    Lou Faber

  • A DEPARTURE

    The sun is departing, sayingfarewell to a day wecan no longer reclaim, lostto history, to our inaction, inattention.We will try and remember it,cling to moments from it,but we know they are illusionsbest left in a past already departed.The stars will peer throughthe flowing clouds, winkingas if we are to guess their secrets,and soon the moon…

    Lou Faber

  • MOVING WALL

    She walks slowly pastthe three bronze menslumped wearily one against the others,and shuffled haltingly towardthe Wall where, at the sixth panel,she stooped and placed the small plastic poppyin the trough that cut along the base of the marble.Eyes squeezed closedshe reached up and tracedthe etched lettersseeking warmth from the cold stoneand felt its coarseness, likehis…

    Lou Faber

  • ONCE, AGAIN

    His mind was dancingwhile his feet were firmly anchoredto the unyielding ground.It has long been this wayhis mind demanding a freedomhis body is incapable of granting.But in his dreams his body hasinfinite flexibility, can moveas the mind needs only to imagine.those moments of freedom, he knowswill depart when the day once againimprisons him, locking himin…

    Lou Faber

  • IN THE PROPER ORDER

    You would think that when you have hadthree fathers they would have hadthe decency to die in the order in whichthey came into your life, that is, after all,the natural order of things or the logical one.My original, who I found more than two decadesafter he finally found peace in 1987 is nothingmore that an…

    Lou Faber

  • SHINZAN QUESTIONS THE NATURE OF LIFE

    Why, when you sit on the cushiondo you imagine yourselfbecoming a Buddha?If you can imagine yourselfbecoming a Buddha, youare not yet readyto become a Buddha.If you sit on the cushionand imagine nothingyou grow ever more readyto find what you nolonger seek so much. A reflection on Case 70 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)

    Lou Faber

  • PHOTOGRAPHER

    Photographers we know are struggling,the wedding business has dried up, dessicatedby the years of the pandemic, the tighteningof matrimonial cost belts, no doubt other reasons.Wedding photography is hard on both the coupleand those with fingers on the shutter button.I cannot remember by first wedding, the marriageitself thankfully fading as well with the freedomof time, the…

    Lou Faber