the versions of our selves (after south part 2)

1
I remember R--.  It was many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  I was about to leave, waiting for papers that shuffled themselves behind office doors, and he passed to stopped by.  R--, visual artist, sculptor, art historian, saxophone player, postmodern-renaissance man.  Stood behind me; and we looked at posts and he said without cue "don't let them take you".  Of course, this wasn't how he said it, except this was how I remember it.  Many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  And I didn't understand what he meant.

2
I came back a good time after.  A version of a previous self, although this time, stopping occasionally to look at posts on boards and everything in everywhere else, sometimes I forgot to know.  Wondering why every thing felt the same and felt different, yes.  Some people were gone.  The air breathed a different feel.  There had been a great tumult, political, factional.  Palpable in the air.  Papers had shuffled, committees, courts, arenas.  A country I did not know.  R--, too, was gone, in self-imposed exile.

3
In company that night J--  began his retelling of 76.  Geographically away from everything else, every one in company of stiff drinks and beer.  In the background, large grey waves hit the pebbled shore.  Somewhere else, news said there was storm.  But the waiter served us three pizzas complements from the house.  And how the stories of near hits and near misses rolled.  One time we were stuck in a cabin, in the middle of a fish farm, in the middle of a thunderstorm.  One time we were invited to a wedding and we didn't know.  One time... A roll was passed around.  And the stories turned to a driveway of angel trumpets, happy brownies, Mary Janes.  And R--, he said how he tried a certain mushroom once.  It made the world aglow and angels sing, and plunged you into depths into certainty of death.  "Completes the process before it lets you go. Like a spiritual experience," he said.  "Although if you ask me would I take it again, I wouldn't."  


4
We all went to see a certain architecture. Presumably 16th century, coral stones fortified by egg whites and goat dung, 8 feet to 9 feet tall in some areas.  An hourglass on top of a skull on top of an arched entryway.  Presumably, a church for innocents (children who died before baptism).  For centuries, it was buried and when finally unearthed, the walls were found to be have become filled with bees, the coral stones were bleeding honey.