an old writer and his words

  • ALTERNATE HISTORY

    My mother wanted to tell me of my great-grandmother, a woman she barely knew, but who she imagined more fully that life itself would ever have allowed. History, in her hands was malleable, you could shape it in ways never happened. She wanted to tell me but she knew that her grandmother wouldn’t approve of…

    Lou Faber

  • DREAM WALKING

    Tonight I will again walk through my dream scrapbook re-creating you. For a bit longer, at least, I have full creative expression knowing now that you died six years ago, never married. I will search from the carefully or inadvertently dropped clue, your obituary, bits and facts that could never have come from the adoption…

    Lou Faber

  • ADOPTING A HISTORY

    She likes to tell him that he came from a small village in Lithuania. He prefers to remind her that he was born in the District of Columbia which has never been mistaken for a small village in Lithuania, although he knows he could find several who speak Lithuanian there. And, he points out to…

    Lou Faber

  • THE FACT OF ADOPTION

    The fado fades under the weight of the Highland pipes and dreams of Cascais fade into the Scottish sky. Where once I thought of wandering Lisbon looking for my face, I imagine I see it in the Grampians, reflected off the lochs whose headwaters now feed my dreams. One joy of being adopted is that…

    Lou Faber

  • QUANTUM GRAVITATION: ADOPTION

    Quantum gravitation, I strongly suggest, is something on which you cannot really count. I know all things are supposed to be relative but as an only and adopted child I have none, for me relativity is something special and generally the lack weighs heavily.

    Lou Faber

  • QUANTUM

    Quantum gravitation, I strongly suggest, is something on which you cannot really count. I know all things are supposed to be relative but as an only and adopted child I have none, for me relativity is something special and generally the lack weighs heavily.

    Lou Faber

  • ARRIVAL

    Twisted strands tell a strange story – acid, a trip you never intended to take – amino pairs that walk you into a world that is yours alone and universal, a foreign place you now must call home.

    Lou Faber

  • TAI YRA MANO MOTINA (THIS IS MY MOTHER)

    It’s odd how your stature has grown as I dream of you occasionally staring at your yearbook picture. It was only four years ago that I knew you existed, but hadn’t the faintest idea of who you were, anything about your life, why you gave me up, and, therefore who it was I might have…

    Lou Faber

  • ADOPTING A NEW SELF

    At some level, he always knew. It was what he hoped, but he had given up hope. He was glad when he was Portuguese, imagined himself on the beach at Estoril or Cascais. Imagination was free and unfettered, and he was a bronze god in those dreams, chiseled of flesh, wanted by all. You don’t…

    Lou Faber

  • GENETIC DREAMS

    The hardest part, surprisingly, is finding that one odd thread where you least expected, and following it back until it merges with another, and another still until you recognize that it is a weft, and the warp slowly becomes more apparent. Still it is nothing but carefully interwoven threads until you allow yourself to step…

    Lou Faber