an old writer and his words

  • SPLIT

    Setting apart, that is our skill:bifurcating, creating dualities.Is it that unity scares us, certaintyunavoidable, no room to escape,to deny, to invoke missing nuance?One of my religious heritagessays you remove head coveringson entering a sanctuary, the otherthat you put one on upon doing so.One says you are born a sinnerthe other says until a certain ageyou…

    Lou Faber

  • GOING DOWN

    Hell is a place where what you least desire becomes eternally yours, or so we were told as children, well not us, not the Jewish kids, for us Hell was our mothers’ finding that copy of Playboy we stole from our father’s stash our mother didn’t know about, and which he would deny, throwing us…

    Lou Faber

  • WITH A CAUSE

    She says if you could only peel back the photograph, you could read the entire story that lies beneath. It is deeper than the image below which it lies trapped, and wider, imbued with a meaning the image could not capture, just as, she says frowning, there are no words for parts of the picture,…

    Lou Faber

  • AND CHARITY

    Faith, or is it hope, seems directly proportional to the need we have to believe in what some would call a miracle. In Hebrew the word for charity can also be translated justice. Faith, he says, is hope with a Godly intervention for hopes can easily go unfulfilled, but faith lingers, and isn’t given up…

    Lou Faber

  • KNOT WHAT YOU THINK

    “Trying to explain the Old Testament is like trying to untie a series of Gordian Knots.” He said that often, and few argued with him. Whether they did not argue because they agreed, or simply wanted to avoid his unwillingness to cease pushing until the other or others conceded whatever point he was making hardly…

    Lou Faber

  • MEMORIAL

    This woman approaches the stone, carefully places sake and cherry blossoms and leans a sotoba against it, before bowing and walking away. It is what you do for a son, she says, looking at the bibbed Jizo hoping she can protect the child who lies beneath. That woman approaches the headstone, gently places the flowers and leans…

    Lou Faber