an old writer and his words

  • THE BEAUTY OF DREAMS

    The beauty of dreams is the plasticity of the mind when it passes the margin into sleep. As the new reality takes hold places and people are allowed to morph, the subconscious becomes sculptor, creating what never was from what is, writing the script, editing it, and all in real-time, the last act to be…

    Lou Faber

  • ROYA’S MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS

    If I ask you to look out the window and tell me what is there, what will you say? If you say there are trees and a house in the distance, I will tell you to tell me what is there, not what you mind creates. If you again tell me there are trees and…

    Lou Faber

  • DONGSHAN’S ILLNESS

    When someone says you are not looking at all well, who is it that is ailing? When that person says you looked better the last time he saw you, which you did he see? If you look in the mirror do you see someone looking ill, and if you do, who is that person, for…

    Lou Faber

  • MIRRORED

    It isn’t the seeing of something that matters, for what is seen was there to be seen so seeing is just its natural consequence. It is only when you label it, give it a name that it ceases to exist, for you at least, for at that moment what exists is the label and no…

    Lou Faber

  • SLOW TIME

    Time slows inexorably with the approach of sleep, the other world prepared for arrival as the awakened world falls away into ashes. Some say it is all dreams, but they have their own reality until they, too, retreat in the face of the great rising Bird that precedes the morning sun.

    Lou Faber

  • LOST IN A DREAM

    In my dream last night, I was lost in a city of mostly dogs, but what was odd is that they were all standard poodles who only wanted to lick my hand and cheek. I tell you this not because the dream was unusual, it was in fact rather mundane. I didn’t awaken with a…

    Lou Faber

  • WALKING THE WIRE

    There is a precarious balance we spend much of life attempting to maintain. It is like the invisible border between day and night dream and forgetting and we walk the wire along the precipice awaiting the arrival of the sun so that we can bid farewell to the dark places in which our dreams hide.

    Lou Faber

  • JOSHU’S DWELLING 鐵笛倒吹 七十

      If a poor man offers you the finest diamond do you take it, and what of the gift of a crust of bread from the wealthy man. Each gift, in its way, is worthy of rejection. Once I grasped at great thoughts – now I can forget my own name and wonder whose face…

    Lou Faber

  • A QUESTION, AN ANSWER

    What is there in a yawn that has time inexorably slow, flattening notes by some unknown but ever constant fraction of a tone, so that it lingers painfully before proceeding? A moment locked in place, frozen like Schrodinger’s cat before observation.

    Lou Faber

  • VAIROCANA (NARA DAIBUTSU)

    Daibutsu, you sit placidly staring down at the throng that slowly bows before you. You can small the faint essence of the joss sticks wafting from the great cast iron pot outside the massive doors. “Do not act as if the world were real” you whisper, or so it seems to my chilled ears, “it…

    Lou Faber