an old writer and his words

  • FUJI

    Looking out the window of the Osaka bound train at the great snow-covered mountain I saw, for just a moment my face on its slopes. Staring down at the train hurtling across the fields, the great Fuji smiled briefly before returning to its stony stare.

    Lou Faber

  • GET IN LINE

    She knew for a certainty that the shortest distance from here to there would be the one route he was incapable of finding. It had always been like this, impatient to get somewhere, he trying to accommodate her, yet still finding the most circuitous route. He was always embarrassed, apologized profusely until the day the…

    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

  • DISCOVERY

    In a small storefront, in an older neighborhood of the city, I found it.  Sepia coated with a fine sheen of dust and neglect, it lay on the table amid a stack of others, as though a leaf of phyllo in a poorly made stack fresh from the oven.  I knew it as I looked…

    Lou Faber

  • YAKUSAN’S LAKE 鐵笛倒吹 八十八

    When you travel from home and are asked if the lake on the shore of which you live is now full, what can you say. Will you speak of the rains that soaked your fields and what of the herd of water buffalo come to graze since you have left. The eye sees only now,…

    Lou Faber

  • SHISHUANG’S THIS SIDE AND THAT SIDE

    You like being here, but you suspect you would like being there as well, if not more than being here. This puzzles you, for you fear leaving here to go there, in case when you arrive there you don’t like being there and would rather be here. You should sit and ponder which is better…

    Lou Faber

  • NO DIFFERENCE

    He said: I took the road less travelled by and still haven’t found my way home. I need some space she said, slowly unfolding herself. He replied: I’ll give you all of Montana if you want, all but Bozeman, that I’m keeping for myself.

    Lou Faber

  • RIDE

    There is a man standing at a bus stop. He waits at this bus stop each day, regardless of the weather. He is waiting patiently for a bus that will not come, the bus line was discontinued many months ago. He has a cast on his leg, but it doesn’t seem to bother him. It…

    Lou Faber