an old writer and his words

  • CONTINUO

    The dolphin knows precisely when to feed when to bless the day when to swim south feels the pull of the tides. Each day at noon he walks across the factory floor around lathes, shavings, and up the metal staircase into the small office its windows overlooking the shop floor and pushes the red button…

    Lou Faber

  • A PLACE OF MONOLOGUES

    The cemetery is a place of monologues, family histories laid bare, admissions, secrets long kept hidden finally revealed You must listen carefully, for the voices speak only in hushed tones, befitting both place and circumstance. There is no dialog, no riposte, no response for in this place, that would be put of place, censorious, Thy…

    Lou Faber

  • FINALLY FALLING

    Outside the snow finally falls and presses the last fallen Maple leaves into the ground free, for now from the rake. Outside the snow finally falls and for a few hours November is redeemed and my shoes are suddenly inadequate even on the half plowed road. Outside the snow finally falls and the full moon…

    Lou Faber

  • APPARITION

    In the night what I am perched on the edge of sleep you appear, just out of the dream shadows, avoiding the light, you are featureless. I call to you and I think you must be smiling but your voice is the wind through the Austrian pines and the drip from the ever shrinking icicles…

    Lou Faber

  • UMMON’S FAMILY TRADITION 鐵笛倒吹 七十一

    The greatest teacher is one who offers nothing and shouts it silently once the student has departed. You cannot know what the blind man sees for you cannot see through his eyes and the deaf woman may hear a symphony in a flower. When asked what is your practice do you answer: life? A reflection…

    Lou Faber

  • 00100000 01110111 01101001 01101100

    There will come a time in the not distant future when words will be rendered unnecessary, when thought will be freely transmissible, when distance will become a lost dimension. That day will be one of mourning, much as we mourned the death of the Underwood Champion, joined in death with the Royal Standard and a…

    Lou Faber

  • RELEASED

    It happened again last Friday as it does almost every Friday. A quick check discloses another band has released an album Live In Concert. Pause to consider the absurdity. If you are in concert the odds are astronomically in favor of your being live. I suppose someone would attend a concert where the band wasn’t…

    Lou Faber

  • NOT _____ AWAY

    There are moments, he said, when everything is suddenly clear, and obvious to me. But they slip away and their shadows quickly fade. She said, if you’d stop looking for the fog, the clarity might linger. Besides, she adds how do you know what is clear and what is not.

    Lou Faber

  • LUDWIG

    When I was twelve, I think, maybe in the last days of eleven, and in my third year of piano lessons my teacher, Mrs. Schwarting, she of no first name, and a steady hand that could squeeze the muscle of my shoulder, a taloned metronome, gave me a small plastic bust of Beethoven, told me…

    Lou Faber

  • TIME OUT

    You could feel the tears embedded in the email “We didn’t know she had only three years.” She is 84 and failing in so many small ways that the prognosis comes with great pain, but barely shock save for its delivery. So we cherish the remaining days and cast the estimate aside.

    Lou Faber