The unexpected, surprising little pool in the desert continues, despite its being criticized and scoffed at by many. This unwanted but persistent pool… its water as nice as always… is warming up a little in the afternoons because our daytime highs are in the 110–112 range and it gets full sun at least 10 hours a day. It now has the Holy Virgin at the South end, facing a wooden crucifix, with colored stones resembling jewels on its surface at the North. Midway along the East side is a golden Sphinx’s head in front of a pyramid, and on the West side, facing it, a statue of an Egyptian Pharoah sitting on a throne, made out of an unknown material, that I’ve had for 20 years.
There are stones, some of which have stories, all around the edges of the pool liner to keep it down in case of a stiff breeze, and shells, including the pink knobby exoskeleton of a very large Sea Urchin, a horned Conch of some obscure species, a Queen Conch, sunned to a bright white, and four Abalones and one grand Triton’s Trumpet which I only occasionally put around the edges of the pool for special occasions, lest the sun bleach the mother-of-pearl interiors of the abalones or the bright salmon, orange and brown mottled color of the Triton’s Trumpet. Many of these shells have been used in my communication experiments over the past months, which led to my constructing this pool in the first place.&nb