an old writer and his words

  • ON 15 YEARS

    Today is my 15th wedding anniversary, and that merits a special posting to the person who has completed me in ways I never imagined possible. The sheer inadequacy of words is made painfully manifest today. I grasp at words: love, passion, joy and each still falls short of its intended mark. There is a moment…

    Lou Faber

  • EARLY MORNING

    Early this morning as I drove through the mist that clings to Portland in March like a child’s yellow slicker, I thought of you, home, asleep on our bed, my side tidy, no faint indentation of life, and I thought of the thousands who have died to date in Iraq, who never again will leave…

    Lou Faber

  • IS THERE AN ECHO IN HERE?

    He said to her, “you know it really irritates me how you always seem to repeat yourself. Say it once and that’s enough.” She paused, thought about his comment, then said, “You know, despite what you say, I don’t, I don’t really, but nuance is something that always seems just beyond your comprehension.” He bristled,…

    Lou Faber

  • NIGHT ARRIVES

    When we finally allow night to settle in around us, and we curl together in anticipation of sleep, we fit comfortably, but with no less passion than when we first did this, but a passion tempered by less need for flame, more for warmth and a gentle caress. We could not have anticipated this, and…

    Lou Faber

  • DHARMA

    In Tibet there are more than 80 words to describe states of consciousness, several words to explain the sound of prayer flags rustling in a Himalayan breeze that reaches up to the crest of the peaks that lick at the slowly gathering clouds, all of these words never uttered. There are no words in Tibet…

    Lou Faber

  • FALLING

    I stumbled in love with you, she said, because I’ve always had this great fear of falling. It must come from my childhood though I can’t recall any specific incident, just the deep bruises my parents left when they fell, without warning, out of the love I thought had to last forever.

    Lou Faber

  • AN OVERHEARD CONVERSATION

    “It will never be what you think it should, and not what you wish it to be, unless by pure happenstance, so just relax and allow things to happen as they will.” “I know I can change the outcome, have it conform more to my will with enough effort, if others like you don’t get…

    Lou Faber

  • UNTIL DEATH

    They sit placidly on two small chairs placed by the steps of the Great Shrine each in the wedding clothes their families have worn for generations too many to count. I stand, out of the picture, leaning on the gate, telephoto lens extended and gently push down until I hear the click. They smile as their fingers…

    Lou Faber

  • INTERACTIVE

      He slides into the bed after she is long asleep.  It is a well rehearsed dance, and she senses his presence deep within her dreams.  He leans into his wife, traces his finger tip down from her temple, along the line of her jaw, into the hollow of her neck.  In this dream she…

    Lou Faber

  • THREE MORE TRANSCRIPTS OF ENTRIES FROM THE TAPE RECORDED JOURNALS OF YETTA GOLDSTEIN

    ENTRY:  March 27, 1971 So, finally he’s here.  Nine months, what God, another joke?  Okay, she ate the damned apple, so stick it to the snake.  But what would you know, another man.  For six hours I’m lying there, dying from pain before the shmendrick walks in like some king, smiles at all the cutesy…

    Lou Faber