CRUISE, ACADEMIC LECTURE, BOMB.

My memory begins with a vertical* search for somebody--perhaps somebody Important--inside a lavish vacation cruise ship with chandeliers and sensational staircases.  I remember riding elevators covered in mahogany.  I walk into a darkened lecture room resembling a Spanish-colonial sunroom** where an elegant woman with long brown hair is teaching astronomy.  There is a projector.  My brother's there, so is (a bored) Ryan , as well as some topless collegiate*** boy sporting below-the-knees swimming trunks who shamelessly gropes my legs.  

The subject of the lecture transforms from astronomy to something like A Retrospective: Ethnic Rifts and Civil War in India.  I become a small blonde boy about age 12 flinging molotov cocktails into a gray afternoon, running and hiding for my life... 

*As in I going up then down then up the vessel.

**Like the one from childhood.  La terraza.

***Your cliche.