an old writer and his words

  • LADDER

    You have to stop and wonder,the child said, why peoplecan take joy in killing, whypeople can scheme each other,why people can cheat if they can. Birds, the child added, onlytry and scheme people for food,why they cheat for the sakeof cheating, kill for pleasure,yet we say we are the higher species. Perhaps, the child concludes,it…

    Lou Faber

  • GRAMMATICALLY APART

    What sets us apartfrom other specieshas little or nothingto do with self-awarenessand everything to dowith parts of speech. The birds outsidemy window shun labels,think only of eating,mating, flight, of goingand arriving, of being. They know nothing of birth,do not fear death, for itis merely a label they cannotaccept or understand. It is left to our…

    Lou Faber

  • EXTINCTION

    My granddaughter is intenselyconcerned with the growing lossof species, and rightly so, and Ishare her fears, though I feellargely powerless to do anything. She has the faith of youth, a beliefthat she and her peers can,with work, effect a lasting change,climb up the slippery slope whichwe have cast them down, and saveother species from a…

    Lou Faber

  • FORKED TONGUE

    I can’t tell you how longit’s been since I’ve seena snake around here, mostlybecause my sense of timehas limits of a decade. I read that they are plentifulin the Everglades, huntedas an invasive species, whichprobably stands to reasonsince our hatred is by now of Biblical proportions, and wehave learned to love goats,so, it is the…

    Lou Faber

  • WORDS, WORDS, WORDS

    We are, he is convinced,devolving into verbal neanderthals,losing are ability to recognizethe linguistic tools that onceset us apart from other species,or at least so we assured ourselves.She knows that what truly sets usapart from other species is the arcaneskill we have at being ableto convince ourselves thatdelusion, firmly held, is fact.Still, she cannot disagree with…

    Lou Faber

  • APART-IAL EXPLANATION

    It is all to often debated what sets humans apart the other species, and that will not be agreed any time soon (which a cynic would note is one such thing itself). Freud would claim it is only our ego, our sense of self, which may explain why people are so capable of being self-…

    Lou Faber

  • VICTIM OF TECHNOSTANCE

    He says, “it’s like learning to walk again after you’ve had a stroke, you know you can but nothing seems to work quite right when you try.” She says, “you just upgrading from one model iPhone to the newer model, so don’t overplay it, it isn’t a matter of life itself you know. And if…

    Lou Faber

  • POSTDILUVIAN

    So when Noah finally docks the ark on Mt. Ararat, or wherever, how does he decide which animals get off first? And for that matter, the earth having been flooded for weeks, just what are they supposed to eat on new land? For the vegetarians it must have been very slim pickings, and who wants…

    Lou Faber