an old writer and his words

  • SLAINTE

    It is just that sort of summer day when the sparse clouds crawl ever more slowly across the city, peering down, as if wishing they could end their journey, knowing this won’t happen. On the fields of Falkirk and Culloden Moor stained with the blood of ancestors who, only now, claim me as one of…

    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

  • NO MONSTER HERE

    Macbeth had a witches problem, but that hardly made him unique. It’s true that Scottish witches are more difficult to deal with than those of much of the rest of Western Europe, something to do with being under English dominion for so damned long that Erse is a nearly forgotten tongue, but you’d think a…

    Lou Faber

  • ORPHAN

    I was a foundling wandering from Guinness Stout to Ouzo and back, in search of identity. In Schul I would cry out to Him asking, “Who am I?” and He would answer, “you are, you are.” The balalaika of my mother’s grandfather sounded tinny, a cacophony lost in Oporto, Lisboa. On the streets of Vienna…

    Lou Faber

  • UNKNOWING

    I don’t know what                         I am, the Buddha said. I don’t know why                         my mother gave me up at birth                         or how many cousins walk                                     the streets of Glasgow                         or where I lost my first tooth I don’t know what                         became of the nickel                         or why the tooth fairy…

    Lou Faber