an old writer and his words

  • UNTIL DEATH

    They sit placidly on two small chairs placed by the steps of the Great Shrine each in the wedding clothes their families have worn for generations too many to count. I stand, out of the picture, leaning on the gate, telephoto lens extended and gently push down until I hear the click. They smile as their fingers…

    Lou Faber

  • SUN-FACED BUDDHA, MOON-FACED BUDDHA

    Life is joy and pain, two sides, one coin – death is caused by birth – stop and consider this. Look into the face of the evening sun, will it retreat from your eyes or linger in memory? Look into the face of the full midnight moon, does she have the sun’s face only until…

    Lou Faber

  • THOUGHT HARBOR

    I harbored the thought one day becoming a monk, and not only because saffron robes would be well within my usual color choices. I knew it was a pipe dream, I love, too deeply, to disavow, life and I’m sure my past lives wouldn’t take all that long to catch up with me, karma can…

    Lou Faber

  • SENBAZURU

    A thousand cranes take flight hanging from the ceiling under the watchful eye the old Japanese man framed on my wall and the Buddha staring down from my dresser.

    Lou Faber

  • 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

  • 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

  • TEACHER

    My teaching is a drawing made of water, faint when it leaves the pen it will be eaten by the sky, it may fall on the pond amid other drops of rain. If you cup your hands and drink it in it will someday be sprinkled on the earth where it will feed a plant…

    Lou Faber

  • SHRINE

    In the cramped dark little temple the Buddha casts his smile for the duration of a match and then you are returned to the pitch of the life from which you sought solace. Another match, another smile I am here always he whispers, you need only close your eyes to truly see me.

    Lou Faber

  • AN ENDLESS KNOT

    You are surprised when the young man approaches you, his saffron robes a bit faded, his sandals more worn flip-flops, his smiling face almost too happy for a cool morning on the rough pavement of a street in Vienna, cafes pressing the curb. He isn’t begging, not like at home, at least, but he does bow…

    Lou Faber