an old writer and his words

  • GALWAY HIGH STREET

    She must be what, in her thirties nowbut in my mind she will alwaysbe nineteen, maybe twenty, shewill always be standing outsidethe boarded over windows of a storefronton High Street, most likely a mauvenubby skirt reaching just over the topof what might be Doc Martens, blackcardigan over a black turtleneckher fiddle tucked under her chin,the…

    Lou Faber

  • GALWAY

    I remember it as thoughit was yesterday, not eight years ago,the evening cool, the streetcrowded, the pubs along High Street:Freeney’s, The Front Door,Tigh Neachtain, Sonny Molloy’sstill warming up as the nighttightened it grip, the Guinnesswashed the taps, filled the pintsand people sat along the streetsome with guitars, one a bouzouki,and all with a song whichyou…

    Lou Faber

  • HOME, STRANGELY

    When you visit Galway cityyou will stand slack-jawedat some, most actually,of the buskers you seeon almost every street.Young and talented, you needto find a bank where youcan stock up on oneEuro coins, lest your tripcost more than youever intended at five eurosfor each performance.And when you visit a pubat night, come preparedwith a song, or…

    Lou Faber

  • LINKAGE

    Linking things is a human need,tenuous forces barely holdingacross synapses easily brokenor lost, never to be replaced. Ithaca is forever joined withGalway City, and I still have notfigured out how to get the twopeople together as together isobviously what they should be. She sits at a small tablein the Commons, staring, waitingperhaps for a writer…

    Lou Faber

  • EIRE

    There are two principal problemswith Ireland, and I found bothto be utterly insurrmountable. Every town, even Galway Cityat any time of day or nightlooked like it should be a postcard. Add to that the horror that inevery pub I visited it was assumedthat if asked I would sing a song or, realizing I have no…

    Lou Faber

  • In any half respectable pub in Galway, and in Ireland the county of place hardly matters, when enough pints have been passed, and night grows thick, even such as I, claiming to be part Irish, claiming two left feet, can feel the ceili deep within, and step out on the floor to do what I…

    Lou Faber

  • CLIFDEN MORNING

    They were meanderers, gypsies of sorts, but never Tinkers, never an lucht siúil. They never travelled far, preferring the comforts of where they called home. They knew they wheren’t liked, weren’t really welcome here. They would be tolerated here perhaps, never fully accepted in good company. But they’d grown too numerous to ignore. They walked slowly across…

    Lou Faber