an old writer and his words

  • THE LEDGER

    NOTE: TODAY’S POST FOLLOWS BELOW: Dear poetry-lovers,           Thank you from the bottom of my heart for following my blog. Some of you have been daily readers since it began 9 years ago, some are more sporadic or more recent followers.  Thank you one and all. As you can imagine, it takes a fair amount…

    Lou Faber

  • THEY WANT

    They all want to tell mewhich direction I should go, thatno matter which direction I am goingit is not the right direction.They want to tell me what to say,that what I am saying is wrong,although I am wholly silent.They want to tell mewhat to think, what I shouldnot even think, although theycannot know my thoughts.They…

    Lou Faber

  • THE PAPER

    He was 11 when he first discovered it. Jimmy knew immediately that (1) it was something remarkable, (2) he didn’t understand it at all, and (3) he dare not let his parents know he had it. It was (3) that gave him the most worry. Not what they would do to him if they discovered…

    Lou Faber

  • NOTHING TO FEAR BUT

    He knew his emotions swunglike a pendulum in an everwidening arc, and that centralto the swings was the pit of fearon the precipice of whichhe found himself yet again.Some days it was the fear of rejection,that was a practiced reality for himyet never less intensely painful.Other days it was the fear of acceptancefor with that…

    Lou Faber

  • PHOTOGRAPHER

    Photographers we know are struggling,the wedding business has dried up, dessicatedby the years of the pandemic, the tighteningof matrimonial cost belts, no doubt other reasons.Wedding photography is hard on both the coupleand those with fingers on the shutter button.I cannot remember by first wedding, the marriageitself thankfully fading as well with the freedomof time, the…

    Lou Faber

  • SEIRIN’S DEADLY SNAKE

    If you go before the masterand ask himto set you on the pathto enlightenmenthe will tell youthat you have comeface to face with failureand there is no escape.If you say you areon the path, he willsmile and walkalong with you. A reflection on Case 59 of the Book of Equanimity (従容錄, Shōyōroku)

    Lou Faber

  • NOT THAT

    A writing teacher I admireonce told me that my truecreative self would only beunleashed if I stoppedwriting about what I knewand began writingabout what I didn’t know.I knew what he meantbut I can be a literal soulall too often, with yearsof practicing law and inthat state of mind I knewI was doomed to failurefor if…

    Lou Faber

  • ACCORDING TO PLAN

    It was all carefully planned and scripted. It had been rehearsed and modeled to account for and correct any possible failure. This one would go off without a hitch. Her first certainly, but finally attainable after years of close calls but ultimate failures. Nothing would, could, get in the way of success. The music started,…

    Lou Faber

  • FOR THE DEPARTED

    I have a good friend wholikes to say that divorce isthe worst thing you can experience.He has never married, we allnote, and wonder if it is becauseof a fear of divorce or of failure.Those of us who have beenthrough the sausage mill that ismore than a metaphor for divorcewould tell him that divorceis a return…

    Lou Faber

  • THE BLEEDING EDGE

    We are lovers of novelty, we wantall that is new or clingingto what we imagine are our roots.It has long been this way,you need only look at the map.Hampshire, York, Jersey, andfor that matter Brunswick and Mexico.We crave innovation, we alwayswant to be on the cutting edge, forgettingthat all too soon it will becomethe bleeding…

    Lou Faber