In this dream I am
returning my rental car, a small dark blue hatchback, into the
multi-storey carpark of an airport. I don’t recognise where I am or
where I have been, but a quick glance at the backseat suggests I have
been on a long trip.
Once parked, I get
out of the car and mentally make a note of don’t forget anything
now from this big mess! I walk
away for a few moments and when I return there is a Korean boy
sitting in the backseat amongst the junk. He is around 12 or so,
quite small and thin. His hair is long at the front with a lock
covering his eyes, making him look older than he is. He is silently
licking an icecream cone.
What are you
doing here? I ask him.
He
shrugs and continues to eat his icecream.
With
a little more prompting he says he is trying to get away from his
mother and his sister. I tell him that he has to go back to them and
I have to return the car.
He
shrugs and gets out. Next to me he seems even more diminutive as we
start walking through the carpark, seemingly aimlessly.
Suddenly
he says, have you seen the 石头花? (Rock flower)
I am struck by a sense of awe –
what is that? I am filled with an insatiable curiousity to find out
what it is. Further questions don’t bring any answers other than he
saw it very close to the airport.
We get back to his family car, which
is a long white limousine, and his mother thanks me for returning
him. I ask her politely if she also saw the 石头花
and
she says – sure! We all saw it, it’s very close by.
They offer to take me there, so I get into the limousine which moves
almost silently. The mother and the sister (herself a teenager, maybe
around 16) are very heavily made up and it is hard to discern their
features. The boy sits sullenly in the corner. I look out the window
and try to remember which way we are driving, but nothing is
recognisable.
Outside the sky is grey and full of clouds. The airport seems to be
in a rural area and within minutes we are among farmland. But there
is something impalpably strange about the landscape – the hills are
green, but are they really green? The animals look strange. The car
feels odd as it moves so smoothly.
We take a turn down a side street and it looks like an ordinary
domestic street in one of the Toronto fancy suburbs like Bayview.
Every house is huge and has a basement. We pull up outside one large
white house, which looks like every other one. The boy gets out of
the car first, shouting 石头花!
石头花!
I look at the flowers planted along the front fence of the house and
from afar it seems that some of the plants are sprouting smooth white
pebbles. Incredulous, I walk closer and see that they are not pebbles
after all, but rather the slim white petals packed very closely together seem
to be fused together. How can that be? I wonder.
Selfie time! The sister calls
out. Even the mother gets out of the car and the four of us gather in front of the white flowers.
Let’s take a selfie of the 6 of us.
She says.
6? Who else is there? I wonder, and
wake up.
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PS. Lithops is the real name for 石头花, a stone-like succulent originating from South Africa which is very difficult to care for and has exquisite fine blooms.
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