We are probably all black centipedes at heart

Dream note: I have to arrange my own boat, a massive crustacean-covered barge rowed with huge crab/octopus like mechanical oars and a front that folds over with a huge splash. A group of older learned scholars are at a table inside the boat/or by the wharf, eating a swell feast. The point apparently is that I have to go out in the boat and interview victims of a genocide, though I find it hard to get the language translations right every time, and I suspect the responsible people – in colonial uniforms – are the ones in the bistro and I can’t/won’t protect them. Even though the lead scholar has been out on the boat before, it is my responsibility now to get it in and out of the fisheries canal according to local lore. The head-scratching point (in the dream) is that I’m not here to catch fish, but to somehow warn the fisher-folk that these are poisonous fish. They look poisonous – well-ugly giant oily black catfish-sharks a bit like Burroughs’ giant centipedes. The issue of genocide against indigenous is traumatising, but the academics in the bistro group all see it only through their own holocaust frames. I’ve not managed to get home to wash or eat, but am committed to doing it right by the fishers, but cannot without flooding the harbour cafe where the diners cavort. I feel I’ll probably get it done without killing them, but rookie mistakes are almost a methodology, and it seems more satisfying showing people how the boat works than worrying about flooding the wharf. I awake with a very clear image of how dangerous the fish are.