Spring officially arrived last week, I feel peacefully energized and again ever so slightly hopeful in between periods of paralyzing portents of doom.

This was my autumn mode in the cooler climes where winter meant cozying up inside my abode and baking, cleaning, reading and maybe mastering the latest game, be it actual or digital. It also meant “Holidays”, financial fluctuations, and coping with increased joint pain, and sun deficient depression. Spring was always a new beginning.

Now I live in Arizona, where life begins as earths hibernation begins. Winter draws us out of our domestic shells and into fervent nature worship. From the first night of autumn in which we are able to sleep with the windows even slightly open, to the first triple digit day, we sing our bodies electric and worship at the altars of Bragi, Nanna and Baldr.

Spring, in Arizona, is not Oestre’s promise of tomorrow’s play and plenty but the harbinger of Hel’s return, for  Hel spends summer with brother Loki burning our world both in flame and fever. My utility bills in the “old house” would triple over a thirty day period as fans and air-conditioning became life-saving necessities, one of the largest hardships of the Arizona summers is the cost of utilities.

I have no idea what my utilities will be this summer as I awoke for the first time in a new apartment this morning. Still in the process of moving, also a challenge for me (seriously challenged to the 11th power, I am “on the spectrum”, have serious PTSD issues around moving from early life periods of abandonment and homelessness, and have allowed myself again to become weak, stiff and overweight, and am barely living paycheck to paycheck).

My life travels in 7 year cycles and this past 7 has been in so many ways my own Ragnarock. Everyone gets their panties in such a twist when anyone talks about the end of the world, all panic and debate and prevention. Literature and predictions focus on the loss and disaster, yet every pantheon’s mythology of destruction ends with a rebirth. The end is never the end.

Our mythologists also seriously underwrite the renewal as well. Butterflies struggling from chrysalii and helplessly drying their wings have a lot in common with two humans emerging spared at the end from all the flame and flooding of Ragnarock to restart human history, or with my own renewal after periods of heavy loss and change.

I still have things to pack and clean, and of course I have to unpack and organize, and somewhere in there I need to pay my bills, nurture and heal my patient’s, complete my school work, play with my dogs, build and nurture new friendships while maintaining the ones that survived the latest rounds of upheaval. Oh, and laugh, it is very important in every period whether Ragnarock or Renewal, to laugh.

Well, because shit happens. If our minds and souls are being fed well, just as it does when our bodies are well fed, shit happens.

In fact as a nurse I can tell you if shit isn’t happening, then you (or me, or anyone) is in really serious trouble.

Namaste, now go laugh a bit and then practice some discipline and git her done!