Numbered Tiles to Infinity
October 20, 2000
So there I am, talking to David Bowie.
"I've gotta go now", he says, and leaves the little thicket of leaves we're sitting in.
I get up and follow him at a discreet distance. He leads some swans out of some reeds, across a small lake, into some more reeds and then, only he comes out. He does this a few more times, so naturally, I'm curious. I tag along behind the swans, and blend in.
As we reach the end of the little trail I see the previous swan settle onto a little square of water bounded by some reeds, kick its legs, peck the water with its beak and disappear. I try to do the same, but don't seem to have the knack. Bowie kneels down beside me to show me how it works. Somehow we both fit on the little square.
Suddenly, I am a fish. A monochrome Koi Carp. There's another fish next to me. I'm confused and don't know how to change back to human form.
"It's ok", he reassures, "just follow me."
After twisting to and fro in the water a few times, I follow the other fish. We swim past some underwater reeds and then we're looking at a waterfall. The waterfall is not very high - only a few feet - and it curves away for what seem like miles in each direction. Above and behind the fall majestic mountains stand, shrouded in green and capped with white.
He points something out on the edge of the waterfall, some sort of carving. Examined more closely, it seems to be a number. A trail of numbers. We swim along the front face of the waterfall until we approach a shoreline.
We flow onto the shore and seem to be in human form again. The trail of numbers heads toward a building, a doorway, to be precise.
The doorwarden examines Bowie first and bids him enter. He turns his gaze to me and seems to dissect my every thought in microscopic detail. Eventually he lets me enter.
A long hallway, with doors every few tens of paces stretches either side of the entranceway. I wander down one and look into an open door. David is there, looking around a very white room with framed pictures leaning against the walls. There is a large table with a bundle of postcard sized photographs on it, which David has just picked up. He looks displeased with these photos, although whether he is angry, sad, annoyed or just disappointed I can't tell. Possibly a mixture of all four. I think he may have taken some of them himself - the mixture of emotions is how I'd react to some of my photos which didn't turn out the way I'd intended.
He sets the bundle of pictures on fire and hands the burning bundle to me. I hold the bundle up to let the flames catch, but notice that the amount of flame doesn't increase, rather it seems like a fixed amount of flame which spills up and down the surface of the bundle. Without warning, the bundle starts to vibrate as the pictures all flap against one another. The flapping makes a breeze and within a few moments, the flames have been extinguished. The vibration of the pictures makes a buzzing noise which draws me into it.
Darkness.
I hear a voice speaking Cantonese, with another arguing with the first in English. In the background is the sound of falling water interspersed with falling rain. I am awake now, the voices are on the radio, it's raining outside and the nullah which runs down the hill behind our apartment building is flowing with the last days rain.
Time to get up.