an old writer and his words

  • HAVING WRIT, MOVED ON

    She says she sees the whole book in her head before she kills it putting pen to paper. It is there, she says where it dies immovable on the page. I invite the words onto the page as well and hope they take a life of their own expressing my intentions if not my thoughts…

    Lou Faber

  • AT THE MARGINS

    Horizons are the thing we have they greatest trouble with. They are omnipresent, immutable and yet move at our approach. They are at once inviting and fear inducing, though now we are largely convinced they do not mark the edge of a precipice over which we would catapult into some endless abyss crossing their margin.…

    Lou Faber

  • EMPTY SPACE

    We sit and discuss complex viscosity values and loss tangent ranges throwing in relaxation modulus for good measure, but we end up at ratios, slicing the data ever thinner, until I fog over and remember that today is the first day of summer, and the birds, bathing in the sun play like children finally freed…

    Lou Faber

  • AMOUR

    A voice clear, jazz straight up in six strings with no surprises, but sitting next to my wife and lover it is what an evening wants in much the same way as a night in the heart of winter demands spooning beneath the blanket pulled up to our chins the outside world, having ceased to…

    Lou Faber

  • BROKEN VOW

    Then there are the days when the promise to write hangs over me like a curse, when the words are just loose associations of almost random letters and they deny, defy real meaning. It is on this day where, when all is set on the page, I move slowly on leaving this behind.

    Lou Faber

  • THROUGH THE LENS

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

    Lou Faber

  • ANOTHER GHETTO

    She sits in the bookstore cafe her head covered by a linen kerchief bobby pinned to the mass of walnut curls. She cradles the cup of cooling coffee and stares down at the slim book of Amichai, yielding to the Hebrew letters that seem to dance across the page. I sit at the adjoining table…

    Lou Faber

  • TOO-LY MUCH

    It is one thing to be short, quite another to be too short, just as it is one thing to be tall, another thing to be too tall. It is a separate thing determining where the border of “too” should be drawn for any dimension. I am short, but I will never be too short,…

    Lou Faber

  • ANCIENT HISTORY

    He asked her what she did, and the question surprised her. Most didn’t ask that until much later on, but she replied, “I am a historian.” He said, “Isn’t that an odd profession,” quickly adding, “and I don’t mean for a woman.” “It is,” she smiled, “but I fell in love with history as a…

    Lou Faber

  • PRESENCE

    He appeared rather suddenly, and didn’t seem to stay very long. Some claimed they knew he was coming, most never saw him arrive, although some said they saw him clearly, that he visited frequently, that they knew his presence unquestionably and spoke to him at some length. She knew there was much wishful thinking and…

    Lou Faber