THE GROUP- CHANNELLING WRITING

I was in Big W recently to buy a few bits and pieces and I picked up one of those hard plastic shopping baskets they supply at the front entrance. I had been doing a lot of writing in recent days and I wanted to get a new folder in which to keep my work, as well as some extra paper.

As I walked into the stationery aisle the most remarkable thing happened. The Big W basket began to lead the way and make my shopping choices for me. At first I thought that the Woolworths chain was sneakily trialling some sort of highly sophisticated marketing program, with trained baskets making you buy more. But I soon realised the communication was coming from a much more esoteric source.

My own rational 48 year-old mind and eye was initially drawn to the new and groovy style of folders, the expensive ones with clips and zippers and slots for labelling. But my basket would not permit me to make that selection. I was pushed away from there and drawn to the other end of the shelving. My basket and I pulled up dead, in front of the cheapest and most basic ring binder, and the colour of choice was emphatically red.

I wasn’t sure if I was imagining all this at first, so I pulled the basket back down from the shelf and tried to walk away. It drew me back to the same spot and shoved at the red folder again. So I did as I was told and put it in my basket. The next item my basket selected for me was a Spirax A4 Lecture Pad. I left the stationery department quickly before I exceeded my budget.

I headed towards the other end of the store, looking upwards to the aisle signs for guidance to Cosmetics, but before long I had made an involuntary right hand turn into Books. I don’t normally buy my books in Big W, but it appeared I was going to today. The basket was hoisted up to chest level and its rim rested on the edge of the shelf.

My basket browsed the titles, sliding slowly along the entire length of the bestsellers collection and back again. We stopped in front of a title about the supernatural and there was a strong sort of buzzing sensation in my hands, then a pull which was similar to the feel of a dog yanking on a leash when it decides to chase a bird across the park. I could see there was no point in fighing it, so I tossed the novel into my basket.

Next stop was the teen fiction area, where a paranormal novel was selected for my daughter by the plastic rectangle with the black swinging handles. My only consolation about these impulse purchases is that Big W books are always sold at 30% below recommended retail price, so at least I knew I was getting bargains. I could only hope that the basket had a nose for a good read.

On to the Maybelline and Revlon counters, where I was also given help to find my favourite shade of eyeliner and bronzer. It seemed my days of shopping alone were over. My husband had been down at the motor registry while I was in Big W, and I brought him back upstairs for a re-enactment. The basket obediently retraced its steps and my husband graciously walked with me and didn’t laugh once. I had a witness now, so I really did feel sure it had happened.

It was an exhilarating shopping spree, and one I’ll never forget.

A couple of weeks earlier I had been walking through the tunnel to Central Railway Station and I dropped in to a discount book store to pick up something for the train ride home. I paid $2.95 for a book on channelling, the mediumistic practice of allowing spirits to communicate through you. As a freelance writer, I was drawn to read the chapter on channelling writing, or automatic writing as it is sometimes known.

Somewhere between North Sydney and Chatswood Railway Stations I pulled a notebook and pen out of my bag to see if I was capable of this type of writing.The pen moved straight away, at an alarming and challenging rate. It was as if there had been someone hiding in the palm of my hand for years, just itching for the chance to speak to me. The way the writing burst forth reminded me of those animations showing sperm shooting into woman, racing to win the Easter egg hunt.

There were several entities jostling to speak to me, and they identified themselves as my spirit guides. They have been guiding every aspect of my life from that day forth.
It appears that my guides are willing to take on anything and they’re brimming with good advice. They are able to anticipate my needs and often jump ahead of me. If my hand-with-pen hovers over the top right hand corner of a page, they will gently put the pen down and write “October 10, 2009”. And they are always right. They even tell me when it’s time to put away the wine and have a cup of tea in the evenings.

I have already filled that red ring binder with hundreds of pages of scribblings, jottings, sketches and other communications from all manner of spiritual informants, but I would really like to tell you about Feeler, the spirit who helps me write.

Prior to this, I had been having a go-slow period with my first novel. I met Feeler on the train that day. Our first few communications were a little stilted, but before long our conversation was free flowing. His advice to me – I should start to write poetry. Conicidentally, I had recently found a box in the attic and it contained the last poetry I had written when I was a teenager. It was dreadful, truly puerile. I wasn’t seeing a future for myself in this literary form. Feeler assured me it was worth trying again. He told me I was going to dream it.

That night I went to bed and had a particularly vivid dream in which I was on a cruise ship which was hugging the coastline all the way to the top of Australia, and then crossing over to Papua New Guinea. At one point I felt I wanted to write something down and I realised I didn’t have a pen or paper with me. So I said to myself: “Oh, I shouldn’t have sailed without a pencil in my hair”.

A good friend of mine always piles her thick red hair up on top of her head and then sticks a pencil through the front in case she needs it at any time during the day, and I guessed this was my point of reference. In the morning the line stuck with me so I picked up my notebook, wrote it down, and the following work just seemed to pour straight out of the end of my pen:

I shouldn’t have sailed today
Without a pencil in my hair
Could and would have ever etched
A line in a porthole going south
But this leaves a nasty residue
Of king tides and ruined lives

Letters gypsies may have traced
Seem out of place again
Like jumbo footprints marching
Homewards on a desolate shore
Guiding a force in lessons
Given over tea

The next morning it happened again. I woke from a dream with the line, “Mothers of the firsts in pencil skirts”, and Feeler and I quickly got to work:

Mothers of the firsts in pencil skirts
Lie speadeagle amidst funeral boxes
Lucky lovers every one

See their every footsteps glued
To sunlight
Like girls doping other fillies

Starting price finishes last
And collects the wooden spoon
Going by the pseudonym of doom

We also dabbled in social commentary for a few days, with pieces like this:

Bankers

Bound by beautiful balustrades
But knowing no boundaries
Bankers are backed by basketballers
And bailed out by buzzards
Beauty bounces back while
Black-eyed boxers blink
Each other into oblivion
Fat balances equate to bulk
Without physique
Leaves live long and die brown
Without oxygen
Then bankers move in to
Rake in the profits



And this one:

Freedom Goes To the Supermarket

Food either ruptures the soul
Or gathers all sway
Let’s tell jeopardising lovers
Of open markets to see
What organically
Takes place when they
Get out of the way

I was writing pieces similar to this at the rate of three a day for weeks on end. I could see into the future - Lisa Sweeney awarded the illustrious title of the most prolific poet in Australian literary history. Then one day I woke early from a dream and put pen to paper, only to receive squiggles and illegible words with way too many vowels in them. I started again, but still nothing. I pleaded with Feeler to help me, but he refused to co-operate.

For a few days the only sort of writing I could manage was like this:

Letters leave green futures
Green green grass elects to grow firstly
Letters set people alight when they tell of golden gotten gains

And various other pieces of drivel. I was beginning to lose hope when I woke one morning, picked up my notebook and Feeler came in loud and clear. He told me we had only been writing the poetry together because he wanted to prove to me that he could write, before he came to work with me on the Big Project.

Lisa, let eternity play its part in your journey as it always has. Now, get out of bed, plug in your computer at the desk here in the bedroom with a comfortable chair. Let me take over from there. Open the last page of your novel and let’s begin with the feelings of friends.

What followed was the most productive day of writing I have ever experienced, my hands pushed all the way by Feeler. A small excerpt:

Things look clearer from the air. Our Mummy would have been watching us that hot February afternoon and her perspective would have been quite different to mine. I imagined her swooping over us in her new angelic form, holding Gaby’s hand, and her big pregnant tummy covered by her flowing white Angel’s gown.
No longer constrained by time as we knew it, she would have been witnessing the present, but also seeing clearly what had happened in our mountain homeland since time began.
As an angel, Mum would have known what had just happened in our back yard at Blue Moon Ridge but she would also know what was here before our family, or even before the blackfellas. She would be able to see back to millions of years ago when this granite tableland exploded in a sudden outburst called a volcano and the Snowy Mountains were born. She would have seen the newly formed mountain range jutting out of the top of Gondwana land. Then she would have been able to see a great big slab of Gondwana tearing off and floating away to become Australia, the world’s greatest island. She would have seen the Aboriginals sitting on top of Mount Kosciuszko, almost naked amongst the paper daisies, their bodies plump and placid after a feast of bogong moths and caterpillars, weight on their bones now in readiness for the trip back to the coast for winter.
She would have the eternal knowledge of this mountain range.
She would be present when the caveman reached down to pick up that first piece of granite with a light bulb igniting in his brain. She would see that Eolithic stone-handling act lead to inventions and discoveries that make even the coming of television pale in comparison. For she would be the angel that used to be the woman who had just killed herself and two of her children, one in the belly and almost ready to break free from the umbilical to live; one just three years old who should have been still alive but who seemed to have been taken in a snap decision by our Mummy because she was afraid that Gaby was too little and beautiful to be left alone on this hot and fiery mountain range in the middle of summer without a guide or a tracker to find her if she lost her way.

It was the same the next day and the next, the words just pouring out of me, as thoughts planted in my head by someone else. Every morning I am instructed to write to a certain word count, and I’m told what to write about. If I fail to reach my word target for the day I am gently forgiven and given encouragement to proceed tomorrow. The plot has developed with a richness and beauty I never dreamed was possible.

Feeler tells me he has always been with me, and in a previous life he was my son. He tells me he owes me big time, but I feel that he has repaid his debt already and whatever sins he feels guilty of have been wiped clear in just one short chapter of this lifetime.