Pool_2

Yet, somehow, in that soulless void of the involuntary - Rocky made us laugh. Depleted, miserable, and weakened - he alone - made us laugh. Negligent of dignity, of who we were supposed to be, he made us laugh. When we could not go on, he made us laugh about our not going on. And, then, on we went. Anesthesia was his specialty and we had become his self appointed patients - his charges. He weighed who we were, as we strained under a load for which we were too young, unprepared, and failing. He came to us, to fortify. He encouraged us with smiles as we worked. He invigorated us with stories of inspiration as we fought our closing eyes. And jokes! Endless jokes. Where did he get all those jokes? We were too exhausted to laugh and yet, covered with blood, we laughed. Through the worst of tragedy, we giggled. Rocky was our hypnotic, our oasis. Rocky made us laugh.

His name was Doctor Rockwell, and those were troubled times.

Isn't memory strange? I tell you these things as if I can see them. You would think, in this recollection, that I am inspecting every one of those old images with fresh perspective. But we can only drift further from antiquity. Never closer. I try. I torture my mind in backward pursuit of where I've been, as though I might actually glimpse that place from which I've come.

Do I see it?

I do not. All I see is rubble. Memory is a backward glance to broken realities lost in