an old writer and his words

  • 33,000

    As 33,000 feet, you want the smoothness that experience tells you, the sky will once again deny. Strapped in, you contemplate cursing the gods of travel, but no, they are simply meeting your expectations. Getting this close to heaven was once, she says, a mystical and spiritual experience, but then we transcended all of that…

    Lou Faber

  • SEE COWS

    The manatees hide just below the surface sticking up their heads every few minutes, for a breath or to thrill the tourists who watch intently, because it is a thing to do in this part of Florida in winter. The restaurants in the harbor don’t mind, it draws a crowd and takes pressure off the…

    Lou Faber

  • APART-IAL EXPLANATION

    It is all to often debated what sets humans apart the other species, and that will not be agreed any time soon (which a cynic would note is one such thing itself). Freud would claim it is only our ego, our sense of self, which may explain why people are so capable of being self-…

    Lou Faber

  • MONOCHROME

    It is an admittedly odd sign of my age that I recall clearly when bathrooms were tiled mostly in monochrome, black and white, and it was a mark of quality when each tile was hexagonal, a hive of ceramic cells, impenetrable. Now tiles are square or rectangular, come in a rainbow of colors, often intermixed…

    Lou Faber

  • A SMALL PAIL OF TRUTH

    The Good news about rom-coms is that Hollywood (and occasionally Paris, Lisbon and Madrid, but never Berlin) crank them out endlessly, and each contains that grain or two of truth, like salt rubbed in the wound of a failed first marriage, and the balm of the discovery of true and abiding love. The small pail…

    Lou Faber

  • THE GREAT HERE AFTER

    When it’s time, i suppose I’d like to go like my dog and cat, slipping away as they were gently stroked. It could be like that, there’s a chance but I can’t count on it, no one can. I never did try skydiving, too late, now and so a failed or fouled chute won’t be…

    Lou Faber

  • NUMBER 9?

    The truly sad thing is not that billions were spent on the voyage to our most distant planet only to discover, on arrival it wasn’t a planet at all, merely a dwarf, a near planet and yet there was no rebate for the downgrade. Life is too often like that, you want a mulligan and…

    Lou Faber

  • DYING TO MEET YOU

    The single greatest problem In writing about death Is that everybody does it, dies Sooner or later, so it’s hardly All that special unless, like Twain, it happens more than once. But perhaps multiple deaths are not All that uncommon, for Buddhists, Among whom I count myself It happens all the time, karma demands it.…

    Lou Faber

  • MOVING PICTURE

    Increasingly few can remember the time when making a home movie was an event unto itself, when you didn’t strap the camera to handlebars, helmet, dashboard or body, but you hand-carried the damn thing weighing a pound or two, you stuffed it with film which you sent off to the lab to have developed, hoping…

    Lou Faber

  • 0 OR +1?

    The real question, the true heart of the matter, is whether this is the first day of a new year, as she believes, or merely the day after the last day of the year, as he would have it. They have this discussion once each year, and they never resolve it for eventually they grow…

    Lou Faber