an old writer and his words

  • IN DREAMS

    In my youth so many of my dreamsseemed full length novels, on occasionsome were serialized over several nights.That did not last of course andas I aged medicine stepped into keep my pressure in checkand the magical diuretics decidedI could get by with dream novellas,which were certainly preferableto the other option, fabula interrumpirBut I continued to…

    Lou Faber

  • LIVE ON GOLIATH

    It wasn’t easy being a fat kid,chubby my parents liked to call it,but we both know I was fat.And both Jewish and shortfor good measure, and I wasn’tphysically adept at any sport,so, yes, I was an easy targetand several kids couldn’tpass that opportunity by.But I imagined I was Davidand all of the Goliaths fellat my…

    Lou Faber

  • SO, JEAN-JACQUES

    I suppose, with some effort,I, too, could become oneof Rousseau’s savage menbut I have to ask myself if thatis a path that I would choose to walk.It isn’t the walking that give me pause,for that, as Rousseau said,enables contemplation and notmere thoughts flitting about,and is a means of meditationin my frantically moving world.And it isn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • TIME IS DUE

    Why must everything happen in due time? That is what he wanted to know. He understood things having a due date. That was a certainty if you accepted the calendar. But what was a due time? Time was a construct, a measuring system, seconds, minutes, hours, all neatly divided so you could identify any single…

    Lou Faber

  • STILL VAINLY SEARCHING

    I spent a pleasant morning walkingquietly around the grounds, searchingfor them diligently, but as on most days they again remained hidden from sight.I did see several cattle egrets staringdeeply into the foliage, knowing that breakfast lay hidden deep within,and a flock of ibis pecking lifefrom the still wet, just watered lawns. Today I even saw…

    Lou Faber

  • ON WRITING

    Someone once advised methat I should always writewhat I know, for that givesthe work an honesty that isessential to its believability. I should add that he said itknowing I was a poet,and not to cause me to give upany dreams of fictionI might still have harbored. But as I age, I find thatI seem to…

    Lou Faber

  • THEY SAID

    She said, “If youhave something to sayjust say it.”He said, “I already did,I said it all.”She said, “Saysomething else, then.”He said, “I havenothing else to say,it has allbeen said already.”She said, “Thatis the problemwith you,you never wantto talk aboutthings I want.”He said, “I do haveone more thingI must say to you –Goodbye.”

    Lou Faber

  • THAT SUMMER

    That summer was onehe would always remember.She was special, she told him soand he had no reasonto doubt her. Thatand he was one to fallso easily into whathe thought was love.It lasted well into August,when she said it was over.He did not understand whybut he was not one to argueso he consigned herto a memory…

    Lou Faber

  • MOTHER TONGUE

    The English language is a joyif you have a truly twistedsense of normalcy, and the wordfashion can easily be its role model.As verb you fashion something,make, construct with an implicationof personal physical activity,an active verb after all.As a noun it is all a quitedifferent world, a world of clothing,of style and, properly, the prevailingstyle of…

    Lou Faber

  • PAINFUL LEARNING

    It was a lesson that took himfar too long to learn,was one he needed for years.He couldn’t remember all the timesthat he had set out to accomplish somethingyet that day was given over to Murphyor the corollary of his famous law,for he almost never accomplishedwhat he had set out to do.But the lesson was deeply…

    Lou Faber