Spring Clean for the May Queen
The wind kicked up out of nowhere, riding a heap of rolling clouds. It was a cold wind and smelled of rain, and I headed toward home, hurrying to beat the storm.
As it rustled through the newly opened leaves in the thicket beside me and bent the boughs of the trees, I felt a little rush of exhilaration at the drama of it. And then I laughed out loud when Led Zep’s lyrics from “Stairway to Heaven” sang themselves through my mind:
“If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow,
don’t be alarmed now.
It’s just a spring clean
for the May queen.”
I’ve always liked that line. Sometimes you need a sweep of strong emotional energy to clean out old debris. A bit of a rant, a snit, a tantrum, a good cry can be just the ticket sometimes to bring you to the point of release.
It’s like this: ball up your fist really tight and squeeze it as tight as you can to a count of ten. Then slowly relax it and uncurl your fingers and feel how light your hand feels, as if it wants to float. See? Nothing to be alarmed about. It’s just a way of cleaning things out to make way for a new flowering.
I looked up “spring cleaning” at Wikipedia and found out it’s a universal practice, often performed in preparation for a culture’s holy days or feasts. Here in the States it was the custom to clean in the windy months of March and April because you could have the windows open before the insects hatched and let the winds blow the dust out as you worked.
Got some inner clutter you want to clear out? Now’s a great time do put some energy to it. Go for a brisk hike in the wind, pen your rants in a journal, get to the gym and pump some heavy iron. Or just sit quietly and look at the mess. Concentrate on it with all your attention, not making any judgments about it, just seeing it for what it is: old, constricted emotions that you need to clean. And then imagine a wind blowing through, picking it all up and sweeping it out the window to a place far, far, far away.
Have a spring clean. May’s right on the horizon.
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