World Dream Bank: OCTOPIA

OCTOPIA

Dreamed 1996/3/21 by Chris Wayan
Small screen, slow connection? illustrated text version!

NOTES NEXT MORNING

Swastika frisbee: play looks selfish to me--Nazi, even! Why? I was the child of two idealists. I should be out saving the world. Right.
Low-grav octopus dancer: a short story in Analog a few months back speculated that octopi might do well in space--they could leave the water, learn high tech...
Mountaintop in the stratosphere:
1. Mt Meru, in Hindu cosmology. The octopus monk has to be very pure, to live so near the top.
2. Starmont, from the science fiction fable "The Winds at Starmont". It means enlightenment too, but also mystery, otherness, discovery.
3. The mesa which our ex-astronaut on a vision quest climbs, in Phases of Gravity. Sleeping there, he sees the moon dotted with lights: despite the Challenger crash, settlers will follow him. The voyage of his life was not in vain.
Stratospheric isolation: also not in vain! I'm kind of a hermit, yeah. Solitary dreamwork. Unworldly art. But... working alone, I've reached a high level where gravity is mild and it's possible to play in ways that seem magical to lowlanders. So play!