an old writer and his words

  • ACROSS THE ABYSS

    The gulf between dream and nightmare is easily bridged in a single step. It should not be a step taken lightly, but one taken in both directions. We coddle dreams, dread nightmares, but we tell them apart on a level neither they nor we can hope to understand. Both are reality. Neither is reality. And…

    Lou Faber

  • FADED MEMORY

    I want to paint O. Henry’s leaf on the wall outside my sister’s window.  She won’t be able to see it for the giant maple that obscures her view.  Even when it drops its leaves a few always cling in the neverland between green and mulch.  And anyway, she says, her neck is always stiff,…

    Lou Faber

  • ALL THAT JAZZ

    The cat only wants to go outside.  It’s night, her favorite time, and she stalks the uncoiled garden hose, which has become a fierce green snake that falls to her attack.  He and she are dead tired, drowned in the sixth night of the fifth annual jazz festival.  His shirt is bathed in the half…

    Lou Faber

  • FIRST TRANSCRIPTS FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN

    ENTRY:  July 30, 1970 So, is this fakokteh box doing anything?  Hello, HELLO?  Buttons, now I’m a button pusher.  Some kind of secretary now.  Hello?  Oh, hell, if it’s on it’s on and if not that’s Saul’s problem.  So yesterday I tell my Saul, “You wouldn’t believe, we’re pregnant!”  And Saul says, “you mean you’re…

    Lou Faber

  • Hiatus

    It was, simply, the strangest summer of his life. He didn’t go home between semesters, as he agreed he would when his parents agreed to pay for college. Their marriage was quickly unravelling and each frayed thread was a live wire that threatened to burn anyone it touched, and he needed none of that. Years…

    Lou Faber

  • Dialogue

    S:         What are you doing, for heaven sake? H:        Isn’t it obvious, I’m searching for Nirvana, for enlightenment. S:         You silly fool, it’s right behind you! H:        (turning suddenly) It is not, I would certainly see it. S:         You might think so, but it is still right behind you! H:…

    Lou Faber

  • Memory

    We were told the average background color of the universe was turquoise.  She said “that’s because a coyote ripped it from the mountains outside Cerrillos.  But now they say it’s actually a shade of dark beige, drying mud colored.”  It was a glitch in the software, the astronomers said.  The coyote was unmoved. She sits…

    Lou Faber

  • Doors

    He walks slowly into the room. He looks around, noting the position of every piece of furniture, each picture on the wall, the nap of the rug, how the rug is slightly off angle giving the room a sense of rhombus-ness. When he leaves and locks the door behind him, there is a sudden darkness,…

    Lou Faber

  • And So It Begins

    The coyote no longer inhabits the hill south of our city. Yet we know he is there, staring down at the lake, watching the grape clusters fatten on the vines. We cannot see the orange-red orbs of his eyes on a still winter night. We know he sees us. Coyote cannot be found, no carcasses…

    Lou Faber