Megalithic Slide Show

(Written in December 2010)
When I first imagined the ritual, I had been feeling really good about myself and my life. I thought I was completely healed, and I wanted to do a celebration. I planned to do the monologue, the braid, Bound for Freedom, and end with the megalithic slide show. I had put this together in the late 1970’s, at the time I was writing The Feminine of History is Mystery. The slides were mostly ones that I had taken on trips to the British Isles. I had two projectors, a fade-dissolve device that would allow me to bring up one slide while lowering the other. I had complete control of the process, could even have two slides on at once — I did this with titles and diagrams, or fading in a slide until it could barely be seen and then fading it out again. I had a sound track made by my musician friend Beverly Woods, and the commentary was mostly poetic. I loved doing it, but it was a lot of work.
The original plan had been to take the slide show on the lecture circuit — I even had canvas bags made so I could carry them on an airplane — but alas, I was completely derailed by depression. I had no idea how powerful were the forces I was up against. I would periodically get angry at myself for being “lazy” and/or “cowardly.” Finally I just let it go along with a lot of other projects that had started with a burst of enthusiasm & then been derailed by PTSD.
Several years ago I saw a PowerPoint presentation about Labyrinths. I immediately realized that this would work for a reincarnation of the slide show. I had all the slides digitized & put on my computer. I’m still trying to get the music digitized. Over the last couple of years the project would fade into the fog and periodically get resurrected. The biggest problem was that my friend Beverly, musician and computer expert, was overwhelmed by her life which included trying to care for an aging parent and battling the sabotaging actions of her sisters.
So the slide show has been hanging out in limbo.