Walter Berry
Medium: Mixed Media,15 ½ by 12 by 4 inches
Date Created: 2009
This is a mixed media piece. It contains calligraphic intaglio prints made on handmade Japanese washi. The completed prints are dipped in encaustic and mounted in separated layers on a wood backing.
The dream this depicts:
DREAM 8-9-08 TAKING UP THE SWORD
I am at a conference. There is a woman who has to leave and die, and it falls to kill her. I will have to run her through with a sword, and I am not pleased that I have to do this, but it will be fine, there are no real bad feelings here about it. She decides to leave/die on her own, so that is a relief.
A Japanese warrior shows up and his son is there also. Then his wife shows up. It seems that they live separately and have separate lives and there is something secret about their marriage. She is very exotic and beautiful. She may be Indian and dresses in veils of clothing and has large eyes that see through you.
The Japanese warrior refuses to take up his sword. I am with him in a bedchamber and I am trying to talk him into taking the sword and being the warrior that he has trained to be. His sword is at the foot of the bed, erect, and I press up against it, his sword between my legs. Somehow being in contact with his sword is a way for me to commune with him in his dreams. He is asleep as I talk to him. He is dreaming, and I talk to him in his dreams. I dream into his dream.
The son, meanwhile, is out in the world, which is this giant circle of open outdoor space with an earthen floor. It is like an arena of some sort with a wooden circled edge and he is dancing proudly with his Samurai sword. I step into the arena and we engage in a ceremonial confrontation. (Meanwhile,. I am also still at the foot of the bed dreaming with the father). We circle and circle until we know each other and then we do battle. I gracefully run the son through with my sword. There is no anger in the killing. He dies gracefully and bloodlessly.
This is the son of both the Japanese warrior and the exotic wife. It is a secret that they have had this son together. When I kill the son, the mother, who has also been asleep and dreaming, wakes up with a start, fully knowing somehow that her son has been killed at that instant.
Meanwhile, I am in the bedchamber with the father and the ghost of the son appears in the room at the left side of the sleeping father. He is in spirit form- sort of like a see-through cloud and he has a ghost sword. The sleeping Samurai’s sword is exactly like the ghost sword the ghost son holds in his hand. The son takes his ghost sword and slides it into the warrior sword, as though the ghost sword is the spirit inside the physical sword. There is some sort of force field disturbance when this occurs. The father wakes up and sees him and realizes that he now has to pick up the sword and be the warrior that he has always been. As the father wakes, it jolts me awake.
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