The Undivided Universe of the Heart

That little voice whispered it was time to get out of the apartment and clear my head. I’d been working on additions to a map for several days, and it was going slower than I wanted it to go. My mother, in her 80s, moved into assisted living last month. As is to be expected, all the changes have been difficult for her. Compounding that, our communication lines seem to be experiencing a lot of psychic static; an ongoing family curse. So I’m trying to navigate that even as my own circumstances are still unsettled, at least for another month. 

How does one undertake the responsibilities of a good daughter, when for some reason the gate to a mother’s heart continues to malfunction? Can you insert yourself into someone’s life if all signs indicate you’re not really welcome? Maybe not yet. Maybe things have to get worse before resolution is possible. When does the child take on the role of the mother? It doesn’t feel like a role that can be stepped into gracefully. Plus, I don’t have anyone physically here in my corner to lean on, which is not what I expected at this stage of the game. I guess I should see it as an opportunity to exercise my self-reliance muscles. 

Despite offers of assistance, none were warmly welcomed. So I’m left with a lot of question marks. I send flowers and prayers across several thousand miles and try to come to terms with my situation. A friend found a small medallion in a parking lot with the inscription “Family Is Everything” only to later realize that it was a Disney branded trinket, which put a new spin on the pithy trope. No, not everything. 

Every family comes with its own lessons, and oh those morphogenetic fields can be a bear. Perhaps the best thing is to offer what you can with an open, tender, and decidedly imperfect heart and let the pieces fall where they may. I think we do this more than once. Maybe my mother and I have done it a hundred times already. Maybe this round I fared better than in the last one, and in the next I’ll make more progress. It’s the journey, right? Not the destination…

So I drove across town to my rented PO box to pick up a book and some linen fabric I’d treated myself to. The colors are gray cashmere and Montana grape, which will make a lovely skirt and blouse for fall. I’m looking forward to pulling out my sewing machine and embroidery floss again. The purchase, which was spurred on by an emailed discount code, was my way of staking a claim on that future. The book was Bohm and Hiley’s “The Undivided Universe.” 

Impatient and curious, I flipped through the pages on quantum consciousness in the parking lot as I placed the packages in the trunk and blanched at the equations therein. I really am hopeless with math and physics, but hopefully I can glean some insights on active information and the meaning of our oneness. As much as my mother exasperates me, I love her and I suspect she loves me too, just as I love my prodigal child. The signals are choppy – entangled human weather in the swirling gyre.

My inner voice said take the growing collection of feathers on the shelf above the desk here in the apartment. There is a strange giant gold hand with some books around it that clearly came from the decorator, books by the yard, not ones that were actually ever read by anyone. In the hand I’d placed a sprig of mistletoe that fell out onto the windshield of my car from the towering willow oaks that line the street where I’m staying. I have a small pile of stones, pinecones, and other bits and bobs. I put most of the feathers and a few of the stones in a soul-bright yellow canvas bag my friend Juliana entrusted to me during our Lititz foray. I decided on my way back I’d stop at “Space Odyssey” Allsopp Park and make a heartfelt intention for my mom during this time of her bumpy transition.

I think my hearts confound some people. They don’t know how to integrate the Alison that makes maps about inscrutable things with the Alison who walks around making patterns with acorns and leaves. I think some people think I ought to be embarrassed, perhaps not that I make them, but that I share them publicly. 

Even though I used to consider myself a progressive, I began to see that I’m really more spiritually-minded than materialist inclined. I have my reasons for being skeptical of institutional faith communities, but I do feel the pull towards a benevolent creator. The gift of sacred cyclical beauty in nature is part of that. A woman on Facebook inspired my hearts. She posted photos spelling out “love” in sticks and stones. During that terrible period of the lockdowns, it felt like a meaningful affirmation and it still does. 

If there is an implicate order, why not seek to communicate with it? For me, making hearts is like a guided meditation. I’m not a good meditator in the regular sense. My wheelhouse is symbol and story. For me, the practice works, and I share it, because it may work for other people too. Someone gifted me a version of their prayer, and I made it my own, and so may it be for others if it makes sense in your life. If not, feel free to immerse yourself in my maps instead. They are both valuable sides of the complex pattern that is Alison McDowell this time around.

I was still working at the garden during Covid, so I had ample materials to work with. Eventually, I decided laying out a heart shape was preferable to using words. Ever since I’ve made 3-4 hearts a month with nature’s findings. Sometimes I do it to neutralize fraught energy in a place I’ve researched, but not always. Sometimes I simply do it as a way to reaffirm my place in the world. With each I offer an intention for “life, health, and open paths” that Cliff Gomes taught me. 

At first I hoarded materials, thinking that was what was needed; but with time, I realized the gift of a public heart is a reflection of a given place. Rather than bringing new materials to a spot, it was better to seek out the message from the location itself. What communication awaits? The trickiest part of heart-making is finding materials to outline the shape. From there, you can decorate inside and outside with a smattering of this or that. 

When I got out of the car with my little yellow sack, I first saw a bountiful native pollinator garden full of sunflowers and bee balm and ironweed, a towering presence with deep purple flowers that I remember standing guard over the lower garden in high summer. I didn’t pick any of them though. The bees and wasps were enjoying them too much. I turned to head down the path and saw a giant wild wisteria vine clambering into a tree. The blossoms were spent, but there were a dozen or so soft, green velvet seed pods. That’s what I picked for the outline of today’s heart. 

Wisteria is named for the Wistar family of Philadelphia, peers of John Bartram, glass makers, and doctors. In the late nineteenth-century the Wistar Institute, which is located on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania, became one of the first biomedical research labs in the world with a focus on vaccines. The first standardized experimental lab rat was created there, the Wistar rat. 

Next, some ferny wild carrot tops caught my eye. I didn’t harvest any, but a wave of remembrance came over me for the summers of my childhood where I played in the dirt lots and tree lines of corporate suburbs in the making. Those summers in the late 1970s and early 1980s where carrot beings anchored themselves into the imaginative world building exercises of feral youth. Even as my adult world has fallen apart, that broken-ness gifted me the chance to renew my connection with the younger version of Alison, the one who would jump the fence onto a neighboring farm to walk the creek and pretend she lived in Narnia.

I left the pavement and took the high route up the wooded hillside. At the bottom I scooped up a few small pieces of bark from a fallen branch that was coated with a bluish-green lichen, still damp from the thunderstorm that rolled in this morning after weeks of dry heat. The storm knocked the dust down and you could still smell the earthiness of the soil. 

The walk up was uneven and rocky. “We are shapes of the Earth” as John (or Tina) Trudell would say. Their refrain came to me as my sandals found footing among the loose stones. A few slices found their way into my bag, including a shard pierced by a round hole the size of a quarter. The path affirmed our mineral connection. Gray slate of ancient sea beds pitched vertically with cataclysmic force; the sheets splayed out like a library of plundered books with bindings broken, quires unmoored. The consciousness of those stones spoke my language of order lost to chaos, but with elegance and meaning, undertones of their present disheveled arrangement. 

At the top of the hill was a signpost. I took a turn to the right and followed along the edge of a small ravine to where the Nandina grew. I thought about the Hot Springs park ranger berating the shrub for being an interloper, but it has a special place in my heart. After I left home, my parents moved into a house with an elaborately landscaped yard. There was a hedge of Nandina and I dug up a sprout and brought it home with me to Philadelphia where it flourished in our small patio garden. I would have to cut it back pretty vigorously every year and it never flowered like it did in the South, but it reminded me of my dad, so of course I grabbed a sprig and put it on the bag.

I also saw three purple mist flowers, blue boneset. I love purple, so I put them in, too. There were also huge stands of poke on the other side of the path. Their flower panicles were in just the early stages of white and green, before the intense purple berries arrive. The white, pink, and green pokeweed always reminds me of the preppy era when pink and green attire was all the rage in middle school. 

During my walk, the woods were infused with R&B music from a distant picnic pavilion. When I pulled into the parking lot, I noticed a white pick-up truck towing a huge barbeque grill. There were a bunch of families having a cookout, which made me think about the big gatherings you see on summer weekends in Fairmount Park. It made me a tiny bit homesick, but in a good way.

When I used to live near John Coltrane’s Philadelphia house on 33rd Street, they had papers in the windows with the saying “one thought can create millions of vibrations and they all go back to God.” So, I go into nature with questions and an inner knowing that on the other side at least it will be ok; we will all be ok. 

I can make an offering to try and harmonize the present moment of uncertainty. It may look like a milky quartz stone surrounded by lichen and feathers and pinecones and wisteria pods with a smattering of purple, because that’s what I like. That’s what little Ally liked, too. And we can weave a story of love even if the creaky lock is stuck, because one day it will open. The vibrations are slipping under the threshold and loosening the resistance. The path is open. We just need to find our way to the trailhead. 

I’m not a nihilist. I’m studying the quantum and ontopoesis and the participatory universe, because I know that love finds a way. Meg knew that. Patience isn’t my strong suit, but this journey may carry across dimensions and I have to learn to endure and cultivate a sense of humor in the absurdity of it all. 

Spoiler alert – love wins! 

PS: I didn’t take my camera with me, so this heart will just have to live in your imagination.