Medea was a Highwayman

I did slowtens last night, using work projects as my visualizations instead of Hamlet & Ophelia, to the soundtrack of my Medea.

The thing is before my eyes
Learned from no rumor or lies:
Medea, without city or friends
And nowhere where pity extends --
O how you must suffer

Let a man rot
in an odious lot
if he never unshutters
his heart to the cleansing
esteem of another --
he'll not be my friend, no never

I did slowtens last week at work, in the room where we'd just finished a long team meeting. I moved like a drowned statue, wading in ultra-slow-motion from one corner of the room to the other. Flipcharts, tables, walls wavered, became flimsy in comparison to the pouring slowtruth, the keening vocals.

Whatever you want to memorize, do slowtens through it.

I have done slowtens through my mother's kitchen while she was cooking; from the back wall of the ghost-lit Seattle Opera House to the stage.

Last week I did them from one end of our small conference room to the other, amid bamboo stalks, leopard glass, orange gladiolias, stickybacked flipchart papers, cokes, tablets, markers, diamond-patterned chairs, whiteboards, turquoise fabric, The Timeless Way of Building, and Lorenna McKennit singing my father's favorite poem.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight
over the purple moor
when the Highwayman came riding
riding, riding
when the Highwayman came riding
up to the old inn door

Medea was a Highwayman. I am unshuttering my heart.

Slowtens are, for me, a harbinger of change. When I start to move physically, life moves are not far behind. I am doing slowtens, paying my bills, cleaning my house, running four projects at work, and dancing.