I had a dream.
A man standing at the doorway with two trash cans full of white paint. He seems to be standing still for a long time so that the surface of the paint stays solid like a frozen lake. And me, sitting in the middle of the messy room, in a heavy spacesuit. He has curly hair, a feminine face, and a few wrinkles awkwardly lying on his forehead. Green hollow eyes, seemingly thinking nothing. Suddenly, he smiled—a signature gap between his front tooth. There he takes a step forward and smashes the door; the frozen lake melted.
I appear to be invisible to this familiar strange man. So I sit still and examine the room as he did. It's a middle-sized room with three windows. Through the window on the right wall, I see highways and cars as the size of a sweatshirt button. On the opposite wall: a square of the green baseball field and purple sunset; a translucent moon where the two colors meet. The third window is closed, only a foggy glass where the reflection of the man slowly magnified. He approached in his ironed suit and tidied Vans—the outfit of a teenage boy who just watched one episode of peaky blinders. He pulls the window open; there is a traffic light staring right into the room—Green, yellow, red. The three colors flicker simultaneously like a disco ball, adding a youthful scent to this silent room. Then, just like the sudden smile at the doorway, the three circles of light turned green all at once. There the strange man runs to the door and pushes the first bucket of white paint.
Splash. He pours the paint on an old square TV leaning against the wall. The thick liquid drips from the top of the bulky square as Doraemon plays silently on the screen. In a few seconds, the white turns the TV, and the shelf below it into a sculpture. He moves mechanically to the next object, a writing desk from my primary school classroom. Though there were forty-one identical brothers of him, I am trained to recognize mine at first sight. An unflattering metal pencil case full of bumps and hollows, few amputated erasers, textbooks that smell like dumplings and vinegar, and a colorful surface covered with smashed oil pastels. Then he takes a delicate glass jar from the drawer and turns it upside down. Paper cranes and paper stars sprinkle on the messy desk like cheap salt and pepper. Then, all of it, including the chair with one broken leg, swallowed in white paints.
The man works ceaselessly in his uncomfortable suit. He collects fragments of handrails on the floor and stacks them in the middle of the room, next to where I sit. As he moves closer, I see a collection of silicon rubber bracelets on his left wrists; some of them are spotted with white dots. He keeps on stacking the handrails until they are my shoulder height. There are classic ones made out of woods, black metal ones that appear to be slippery in the rain, rotten ones that belong to the dim staircase, glass chunks that are comfortable to lean on... Then, he lifts the half-empty trashcan and pours it over. He didn't ask me to move, so I did not. The handrails vanished in the triangular stack, shaped like a frozen bonfire.
The man took a short break, bent down to make sure his tidied vans were still flawless, and then kept working. Spinning washing machines and a sock that has been singled out, an exhausted treadmill, two stained couches, an unstable tripod, a paper cup of cereals, and the smell of air freshener spray.
Now, all the objects have become one with the floor, like mushrooms that grow from the land, covered in a thick layer of snow. The man stands, looks unsatisfied, and walks toward the second trash can. He covered the ceiling as well. Now the sticky paint is dripping from the top.
"It's time for you to leave," he tapped my shoulder, "the paint will dirty your white spacesuit."