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Reflections by the Pond – January 30, 2012

Odd, the process of strangers becoming familiar acquaintances, then, perhaps later, becoming friends. One steps into a roomful of strangers for the first time; each face is a mask representing an unknown: no background, no common history, no point of reference. Just a face, perhaps a voice and a handshake. A greeting is proffered, but is it real? Does it give voice to genuine interest, or is it just another perfunctory recitation?

Who are these people? What do they believe, what do they stand for? What are their names, and to whom do they belong? What do they do, how are they dressed during the other days of the week? What are their lives like when they have removed their good clothes, when they have removed their Sunday face...

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Reflections by the Pond – January 16, 2012

He was an old man, sick, tethered to oxygen, coughing up blood. But still working. The last completed film he directed was entitled The Dead. In his final days he was in and out of hospitals, each time he was thought to be at death's door.

John Huston was a brilliant director and screenplay writer (The Maltese Falcon, The African Queen, The Kremlin Letter) and accomplished actor (The Wind and the Lion, The Bible, Chinatown). He was charming, entertaining, intelligent, and could spin a good yarn. He was also an unapologetic womanizer, a drunk, utterly self-centered, brutally callous toward his many wives and mistresses, and someone who loved to play vicious, cruel jokes on others.

During his last stay in a hospital, when he believed himself to be close to death, he was visited by Zoe Sallis—never his wife, but mother of Huston's son, Danny...

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Reflections by the Pond – January 2, 2012

By all rights and everything that is holy I should be gazing out onto land blanketed by a foot of snow. It is January, after all, and here in the Midlands, where all storm systems meet, this is typically the coldest part of the coldest season of the year. The temperature outside should be a breath-sucking, back-snapping level of frigidity sufficient to drive the hardiest farmer or bricklayer into long johns, an insulated suit, and facial hair. The vista should be knee-deep white. I should gaze out my window across a sparkling, crystalline blanket of powder to the frozen pond, and beyond into the cotton-shrouded woods where the deer and turkeys and squirrels reveal themselves against the contrasting backdrop.

Why, then, do I gaze out upon a desert of brown and straw colored grass to a depleted pond thawing around the edges...

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Reflections by the Pond – December 19, 2011

He had never been down to earth before, but now that he had been sent, Harry was determined to make the best of it. He was determined to get along.

If the truth be known, Harry had never been terribly impressed by the human species; he had always considered them a most inconvenient, unsightly bunch. But ever since The Son had gone down to be born and live amongst them, Harry had acquired a new level of interest in the inhabitants of earth.

Harry had been set down in the hill country of Lower Galilee, directly west of the lower tip of the Sea of Galilee, the great fresh water lake around which lay the cities of Capernaum, Gennesaret, and Tiberias.

Almost immediately his feet began to ache. The road was hard-packed soil, and on this day it seemed to the angel that it may as well have been forged iron beneath him. Each step on the compacted earth jarred his bones. Meanwhile the gravity of the globe worked against him. Harry was unaccustomed to these physical constraints...