Walking the Never-When

By Nerak Coven

As a mother for many and a victim of workplace trauma and abuse at the hands of corporate care. There comes a time when you bend, break, or use art therapy to warp reality and rebuilt yourself to be the catalyst for the change that you desire. Change that has a purpose, when the spiritual representative of the continental land mass of Australia, turns up in a borrowed body, to motivate this multi-tasking mother to leave the arms of her lover and orchestrate universal expansion with the aid of cookies and cold tea. This story may be strange or an obvious repeat, of what you know. To have been written in code upon your DNA. With a spoonful of therapy to aid conversation and community connectivity. You will find this tale weird, yet to feel it strangely to be true.

Weird they had called me as I sit amongst the fringe. Weird but good my co-workers said when I was the mouthpiece for their concerns. Weird but ours the family boasts as I worked myself to the bone to create for others a Sanctuary and for them a loving home.

Now facing menopause and with a midlife crisis long overdue.
I am embracing my weirdness to write stories to ignite change and conversation in people like you. I am the sober driver who will get you safely home. I am an Australian survivor and walked with the ME2 movement beating a drum.

Why are we still burning fossil fuel instead of harnessing the sun.

I am a frustrated woman who is raising her voice because my country has told me that climate change is no longer a choice.

I am Nerak Coven. (Artist, Activist, Author)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781982295202

Nerak Coven

Jodie, a hardworking, 24/7 carer in her 40’s, is looking for meaning to her life. Living in rural Darwin, experimenting with art therapy, she finds a way to create an evolving portal, giving her the gift of escapism from her domestic repetition. She leaves the hamster wheel of motherhood and reality behind, using a portal to become the best version of herself, a dream many of us desire, taking control of her future. “Pausing to admire the artistry, I think deep thoughts about the moon and stars and my supposed intentions, as this portal possibly hums with potential.” “Feeling foolish dressed for who knows what? Standing in the moonlight next to my most recent form of garden art, once more decorated by candlelight. With a knife I should have sharpened, I barely break the skin of my pinkie finger. As cutting yourself is a lot harder than adventure stories make it out to be.”

Book preview

PROLOGUE

T he grass is brown, paving hot. Wilted, hang the leaves awaiting the monsoon, months from now. Tree roots stretch down to the water table, deep below. As bores suck from above, returning the nectar of life, filtered through septic tanks, tucked out of sight in their bed of earth.

My mind wanders. My reality has evolved to appreciate the interconnectedness of chemicals, woven together to form the mass of tissue that I recognise as me. With personal change through trauma, arthritic wear and tear and the birth of my three, now teenage and adult children, I can visualise the flow and interchanging reactions of substances all around me. Obviously not with my own eyes, but thanks to science and nature documentaries on the ABC, I can pause to appreciate what is going on, unseen, under the surface.

These are the thoughts that I distract myself with as I hang the washing on the line, ignoring the constant pain of middle age and my social irrelevance to the world at large, while wishing for something to change.

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CHAPTER 1

I wish I could express anger as childishly as some. Only I would not because it is dumb. I watch the red flushed face of my husband, spittle flying from his mouth, speaking at me with a furious tone, regarding my technical incomprehension. I now regret asking him how to work the functions on this new TV remote. Though not exactly new, it is an older TV borrowed from family, after lightning spiked our own.

As Warren rants, I maintain a practiced calm expression. A look that lets him know that I appreciate that, yes, this TV remote is also new to him, that it is true I have had no desire nor inclination to read the material about its function and, yes, it is like our previous remote which I had also asked similar questions about, but obviously not committed to memory. Must he speak to me like I am an idiot though?

I feel like an observer of my own life, mentally taking notes on what an unhinged and crazy person looks like. We have all been stressed from recent events. Scared from finding their wife and mother bruised and bleeding, comforted by the police, after an incident between siblings. It had escalated and I, defending the youngest child from harm, had received the beating on their behalf.

After decades of working from home as a 24/7 early childhood educator, which enabled me to maintain a car, essential for our rural address, I had successfully managed to raise our own three children, whilst caring for others who were wards of the state. Children who needed care for days or years, within the supportive structure of our family home. They all learnt to read, write, and participate within the community; through sport, music and events. Our home offered good food and hygiene within a positive domestic environment, space for them all to grow.

Being a 24/7 example of domestic virtue had its rewards, but also meant I was no stranger to a temper tantrum. The children I cared for found themselves often confused by external structural inconsistencies, being retraumatised during the visits to family or places relevant to their reason for care. Add to that, hormones. Then, when they returned to the safety that our home represented, they had felt able to be vulnerable, often expressing it verbally and physically via a meltdown. An abundance of calm, repetitive support was needed to build these children back up. With extreme behaviour escalation depending on the child’s age, historical emotional damage, disconnection, and the lack of true support from the outsourced profit-driven system of long-term care, for whom I had once worked.

Instead of stability and consistency from which to grow a healthy productive adult, regrettably these children in long-term care were being shaped by a revolving welfare wheel, driven by corporate care, whose inconsistencies undermined those of us on the front line. A system ghosted by historic racial regret, that repeatedly retraumatise fragile children with the pretence of connectivity. Thus, leaving the carers and families vulnerable to generic, bureaucratic solutions that are inexpertly wielded by box-ticking officials, who do not wear the repercussions of their decisions.

With Warren’s out of character aggressive response reminding me that the rest of the house was also harmed by these events.

When the beating I had received resulted with the children both being removed from my care against the wishes of the youngest, until this incident could be investigated. With no goodbye or concern for my family and our other foster child, who had formed bonds, after months of them living here as one of us. These babes leave with issues unresolved and the violent behaviour likely to be repeated at current and future placements I was angered by the entire process.

Mentally struggling to navigate the PTSD that colours my current unemployed status, I am in pain from the recent surgery I had to the platelets of my back and I mourn the hope I once had for the children I had cared for.

Remembering the day after when I was admitted to hospital, for what was to be routine spinal surgery. Until decorated with the abuse of domestic violence. That had me relive the trauma of this and many other incidents, questioning and defending my career choices every three hours, as the hospital staff changed and required reassurance that it was not my husband who had mottled my body with these marks of violent assault, but a child, in my care.

The years I now felt I had languished as a willing participant, only for my family to again feel betrayed the day after I returned from hospital. With the final straw plucked by the boy whom I had considered my own. With hormones racing and mixed messages received by peers over the phone, whom he was arguing with, as he threw himself out the back door, where to his surprise we collided. He looked at me, confused and scared by my still beaten appearance but resenting the removal of these other children and possibly fearing a similar fate. Our collision knocking my unbalanced, bandaged self, with howls of agony, hard upon the paved, veranda floor. His phone suffering the same fate, now with shattered screen. Conflicted with emotion and the stress of these events, my last child from care started to bang his head upon the wall. Family came to restrain him, to calm him down and talk sense before giving first aid to him and me once I was scraped up off the floor.

But the incident report that had to follow saw our child of many years also removed until another investigation could clear my name. Whilst waiting the months as if in detention this ensured my silence and the ability, I would have had to change the care organisation for the better, from within. When finally cleared by the investigation and tired of corporate manipulation. It was too late for this child to return. He was enrolled in another school, in the suburbs where being in a gang was now cool and he had dumbed himself down to fit in. That the system had excepted and shut the gate on his connection to us as we expected. Sacrificing this child’s enormous potential and his network, who would have fought to improve the standard of his care.

Behind Warren’s anger I realise we all grieve for the children we have lost and feel betrayed by the system I had once championed.

Now with PTSD and physical pain haunting my every step, as my financial and emotional independence lies in taters, the reality of our constricted finances begins to bite. That with practiced frugality and the increasing independence of our now older children, were financially treading water.

So, it is no wonder that Warren has emotionally reached this breaking point. That although understandable, this was still not acceptable or helpful behaviour to express over such a minor issue. He could have just said ‘not now’ about my TV remote enquiry.

The microwave dings. His lunch is ready. A domino effect is in play, with my past transgressions recorded in the encyclopedia of his mind, of which he proceeds to remind me of between mouthfuls of food. One fault leading to the next. I could be flattered that he has recalled all these moments in such detail. Yet I am bored, after 23 years of marriage. My mind drifts away from this tirade, whilst still appearing attentive, so as not to divert the anger towards anything else.

He was not always this loud. Good, anxious, domestically repetitive, sexually entertaining, intellectually challenging and fun. Life had been good with Warren as my creative muse and emotional anchor. Only recently, possibly due to the current federal instability, there has been a great deal of shouting in my general direction, as my foibles are used as a convenient scapegoat to the true complaints that he has not the power to fix.

Like the incompetent federal government and our community’s increasing stress from their inaction on climate change. Or the slipping of professional standards, which Warren has been struggling against at work, as excess profits are syphoned off, untaxed, to havens overseas, resulting in his work cutting corners and laying off people. All of which I empathise with, but it is unfair of him to vent his displaced rage at me. I quietly compartmentalise Warren as my last high needs child and patiently, wearing my professional face, listen as he sound-boards his fears. As he eats, I watch his collection of greying dreadlocks bounce and imagine myself being lectured to by a talking squid. This thought amuses me.

My mind wanders back to when I first saw him, standing naked in a kitchen making toast. I had come to collect my friend Douglas for a rant over breakfast at the markets, regarding a youthful problem I had been having with boys, who thought themselves to be men. This naked stranger’s confidence in this kitchen, that I assumed was not his own, shocked me into a moment of paused review. Fine of foot and shapely thighs, his body was pleasing to my eyes. With hair of ringleted burgundy that came to rest upon the swell of his shapely ass. I had never seen hair so lovely and certainly not on the head of a bloke. I quickly looked around to check that I was in the right house.

Morning, he turned towards me, squinting in my direction with a confused look. I giggled a greeting before rushing down the hall, where I found Douglas clothed and ready and this naked stranger no longer in the kitchen, as we exited his house.

After a morning of shared confession and sage advice that we would both ignore.

I returned Douglas to his house and met Warren once more. Sadly, he was now fully clothed with his hair tucked up in a floppy hat. Formally introduced now as Douglas’s cousin from Tasmania, escaping the islands winter chill by coming up to our northern weather. Smirking I explained how we had already met. I would not have thought him to be the same man, had I not still been able to see his lower leg and shapely thigh. His eyes were now behind thick glasses, slightly magnified. As he spoke, I was drawn to watch the disfunction of his teeth that were distracting me with their odd fitting angles.

Further conversation revealed he had visited here in Darwin for a year of primary school where he met my older sister, Nickola, who now hates him after a maths test saw him beat her by a point. No stranger to sibling rivalry, I admired his satisfaction of besting my academically brilliant, supposedly attractive older sister. I saw this as the sort of thing a champion would do. Possibly this ‘enemy of thy enemy’ emotion flavoured the feelings that would grow, for this tall, dishevelled, enigma of a man.

During the years of casual conversation that followed, he offered to partake with me in an inventive variety of humorous sexual euphemisms. A request, that from others I would have seen as harassment. Yet fortunately for him, having seen the physical candy that he now concealed behind denim and cloth, with our social connectivity and his deep, inviting storyteller tone, this repetitive mildly humorous irritation became an intriguing itch, that curiosity eventually required for him to scratch, over and over again. Eventually this palatable consumption of our forbidden fruit brought forth the main course of marriage. With jelly legs for dessert.

During my calm-faced, inner musings, Warren has become silent at the end of the table, bringing the house back to its usual peaceful state. I am quiet in my mind as the house is now quiet most days. I only ask for technical assistance as an excuse to interact. As all I now seem to be getting from the family is the emotional scraps to deal with between meals, when screens have grown cold or when the next book is delayed in a series. Petty first world problems that do nothing to stimulate my mind. A mind for whom technology is not a friend. With my brain deleting all knowledge when the combination is long or operated infrequently. But as I perform the domestic daily repetition necessary to ease my family’s existence, is it not fair that I can ask them to occasionally repeat a function or two for me, without this inquisition?

Emotionlessly I look at Warren. Water off a duck’s back, I think, and resist the urge to quack? When he is fed and well rested Warren is a delight to have around. A conversational beacon to attract the social moths. Not unlike the high needs children I used to care for. Only now, with just our own three children to focus on, most of his gaiety is spent interacting with them and friends with games and information via the screens.

Is this the prize I get for being attracted to genius and the curse that he now resembles a grumpy elf? He picks up the TV remote and types in a sonnet of commands before pronouncing it cured.

Thank You. I say, without rolling my eyes, then lay on the couch to ease the arthritic aches of depression and pain. Distracting myself with the clever banter of the pretty people on TV who live productive, imaginative lives that no longer become interesting or relevant to a network once a character gets married or has children? I try not to take this personally and relax.

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CHAPTER 2

W hat shall we have for dinner? runs like a hamster on a wheel in my mind. Never satisfied. Tomorrow is a new day. The world turns, with dinner coming around once more. Tonight, we eat crumbed schnitzel with three veg. A crowd pleaser to send them away content to their pixilated technological world of connectivity. My family is unaware that this may be our last meal together, if my experiment works, I think, in a regrettable way. Or so it is implied by movies and literature, when their characters experiment with dimensional doors, as I now intend to do.

After gouging myself with self-help, healing, and mindfulness books to find direction through my current PTSD driven isolation and pain, I chose art therapy to navigate a course of personal growth and healing. Restricted by my current budget of nothing I have been repurposing, renewing, and recycling discarded material into items of art and sculpture. They stand as signposts of my recovery, plotting a course with creations around our rural yard.

My recent creation is made from three very serious arches of steel, that I had found rusting in a yard, with the help of my son’s friend. I had watched him change from a gangly, acne strewn youth to a tall, accomplished young man. I feel old and my thoughts inappropriate, as my eyes trace his muscular form, sparkling with sweat earned from creative labour. Ashley, with his perfect knees, youthful enthusiasm, and welding ability was conscripted to assist with the creation of what I had predicted to be a Trans-Dimensional Portal. And now it stands as a circular steel vision splendid, suspended upright on triangular supports. With questionable physics we had created and moved it around the yard until it came to rest here in the garden by my laundry.

As a distraction from seemingly endless pain, depression, and social isolation in what now feels to be a cataclysmic world driven by idiots, I smashed tiles and mosaiced them upon this standing steel circle. Symbolising this as my release of emotional baggage and that of the children with whom I had once acted as an empathetic sponge. I distanced myself from the decades of professional bullying and trauma that I had received from work. Connecting these tiles with a blood-coloured grout to show the essence that must be spilt, to breathe life into a creation. I call this my Trans-Dimensional Portal (TDP) - I am unsure why? But these were just the words that resounded in my mind upon seeing its componence. Together they stand like a giant child’s bubble wand, blowing unseen hope bubbles across the country and I had considered it complete.

Responding to Warren’s temper tantrum yesterday and his trip down memory lane, today I have etched new purpose onto the tiles on this construction. From languages alive and dead, about travel and returning, change and renew. All this energy brings me to this moment, confident about what I am intending to do.

I light candles in the empty spirit bottles attached at the pentagram points, upon this mosaiced circular construction. They burn bright and epic with potential and I step back to admire the artistry. It is looking so fabulous, I could dislocate my arm with the amount of self-congratulatory pats on the back I mentally give myself!

I’m feeling inspired. With the moon rising full above the trees, creating an ambiance most epic, I have my youngest son’s white rabbit as a fortunate guinea pig, in rabbits clothing, hopefully going where no rabbit has ever gone before! Or at least, this is the theory that I am here to test before conceding that probably ‘yes’ this was an artistic waste of time, created to fill the painful empty void that my life has become.

Pausing to admire the artistry, I think deep thoughts about the moon and stars and my supposed intentions, as this portal possibly hums with potential. However, research was never a strength, and it’s not like there is an instruction manual for trans-dimensional construction! Ignoring my nagging insecurity and in the name of art and science, I toss my son’s rabbit through the centre of this circular candle-lit construction. That regrettably, does not appear to work as expected. It lies on the ground, unceremoniously. Only not in a mystical way of profound enlightenment or rift opening, but a more surprised "WTF was that!’ kind of way. I pondered on this whilst searching for the rabbit, for what feels like forever, only to realise that rabbits are territorial and she had gone back to her hutch. I curse my stupidity and disillusionment by this non-event. Though I was not expecting dimensional disharmony, or the rabbit to grow horns or have extra legs, but a spark of something to offer hope would have been nice.

I slump inside, shower, consume painkillers and sulk off to bed. I find Warren there, unaware of my activities, continuing to play his networked computer game, across the three screens, on his desk beside our bed.

The next morning, over porridge, I reflect that the experiment possibly failed because the rabbit was unaware of what was meant to happen. This being a mystical science, I feel the intent of the creature stepping through, could probably be key to it working. Also, blood. All my research, for interesting symbolism for implied travel, or gateway like transitions involved blood. Though my extensive research was mostly the internet and paranormal fiction, I have hope that these authors did more credible research than my own. They do confirm the importance of the blood. From a scientific point of view, I guess blood anointed upon a portal, from the traveller stepping through, could possibly act as a genetic global positioning signal, to assist with the return journey. Only this is a hypothesis based on faith, in the artwork and structure, not scientific knowledge. Knowing this I guess I was expecting the rabbit to fail but I could not have cut my daughters rabbit to make it bleed. I am curious, not cruel.

Albert Einstein once said, Imagination is more important than knowledge. Which is how I now justify making my portal and have come to believe in its potential. Which I admit may have just been a creative distraction away from my current physical and financial issues. But afraid of losing myself, numbed with prescribed pain killers and not selfish enough to escape the pain of existence via self-harm that would hurt my family.

‘I am not suicidal’, I reassure myself, without great conviction? I have things to live for, family who love and need me. With new things happening to generate surprise.

Yippee.

I sarcastically think of the news about our climate’s continued disarray, as pain taps away like a woodpecker on my soul. This world seems to be spiralling towards human-induced annihilation, led by the puppet politicians of old money, and outdated ideology. With a private media leading the voting majority on a conga line to their own destruction. I can’t move far without regret and the shared convenience, that is disabled parking, is now one of my few joys.

Honestly if this supposed dimensional experiment did accidentally delete me, it would be a pity. However, my family is now old enough to muddle through. We have supportive friends, my husband is smart so after grief ran its course, I am sure he could find a new more capable partner, and I could really use the rest! What happens after life I do not know? I assume that like everything else in nature, I would be spiritually and physically broken down and the sum of all my parts would go towards an infinite variety of other life.

Is this just the PTSD causing my inner monologue to run through thoughts of depressive doom? Or am I talking myself down so the only direction I have left is up?

This mental debate leaves me feeling positive about something that I cannot remember deciding but distrustful of this feeling of confused hope. I spend so much time by myself now, thinking in circles it’s hard to find a direction.

Grounding myself with the comfort of routine, the next night after dinner, the family is distracted by technology once more. I change into comfortable clothes and sturdy shoes. Ignoring the heat of Darwin wet season, I wrap a jumper around my waist over the belt where hangs a leather pouch of water that’s leaking just a bit, moistening my outer thigh, and a small knife. Because I am trying to avoid overly manufactured products. If my hypothesis is correct, and I have made a gateway to somewhere else, I may step through from reality A to reality B? Or perhaps it is an atom crunching transportation device where without the aid of science fiction machines, I hope to teleport myself to somewhere unknown.

Unsure, or perhaps my history of accidental head trauma has driven me mad and with nothing left to lose but pain and mental disarray, I am ready to say, What the hell.

Keeping my personal items simple, until passing the clothesline, the wisdom of Douglas Adams’ ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ echoes in my mind. Whereupon I wrap a towel around my head for crash test padding purposes just in case.

Feeling foolish dressed for who knows what? Standing in the moonlight next to my most recent form of garden art, once more decorated by candlelight. With a knife I should have sharpened, I barely break the skin of my pinkie finger. As cutting yourself is a lot harder than adventure stories make it out to be! Accidentally causing hot blood to rain down unexpectantly, happens all the time in the movies, but doing it on purpose with a dull knife produces nought but an embarrassing ooze. I think that amputating the whole digit would have been less painful, as I coax blood from this timid prick. Lesson learnt. I anoint the mosaiced portal with my blood.

Thinking happy thoughts of my intended destination I close my eyes and with a deep breath wince as my body complains about the required step up and over the raised base of my mosaiced construction.

Nothing seems to have happened.

The temperature feels the same, I hear a night bird calling and the endless slithering of tyres upon the Stuart Highway, 9 km away. With eyes still closed. I run my hands down myself.

Yes, clothed, only my finger no longer hurts.

I open my eyes. Well, that was unexpected…

It worked!

It worked!!

I am on the other side!

Literally it seems. The other side of my yard. Possibly about 50m away from the portal, beside a pile of scrap that I use to build things out of. My pants are falling down!?? I need some light.

The moon is behind clouds and I’m standing under the tree canopy which is disturbingly dark. A note to self: bring a candle and matches next time. I am not sure where I really thought I would end up. Another time? Another dimension or place? I was vaguely envisioning myself appearing at the front of our property. It is strange that I am here. Not as strange as it working at all, but not where I had thought myself to be?

The moon comes out from behind the clouds for me to see that I am standing next to a spare tyre, that is acting as a weight on a small pile of corrugated iron. I had found this tyre at the dump years ago, having admired the pentagram pattern of the hub’s interior, I brought it home. The pentagram. I wonder? Maybe this is relevant to where I ended up. It would make sense that the portal made with an implied pentagram joined by candlelight, to act as a doorway, would open through a corresponding shape.

It’s probably good that I had this tyre. If not, I may have appeared from another five-pointed pattern, possibly attached to a car and vigorously moving. It would be embarrassing to finally perfect a transportation device, only to reappear as if tossed from a car, and then to be run over by oncoming traffic! Such an accident would upset and confuse my family and stress the poor emergency service officers who would have to scrape my tattered remains from off the road. I may be willing to risk my release from pain through accidental death in the pursuit of this mystical science, but rudely littering the road with my remains and possibly traumatising the emergency services personnel and my family is not part of the plan.

Do I walk back to my original portal, or do I need to go back the same way? I reach down to touch the tyre. Nothing happens. It feels as expected, like a metal tyre hub with a rubber rim. But I’m forgetting blood. The knife attached to the belt is, still with me, only the belt may have come undone as it like the jumper and my shorts are falling from my waist. Which is odd but can wait. The water bladder also survived, only it no longer seems to be leaking.

I slice my finger with more surety. Blood appears with pain. I hope not to get an infection, from touching unclean things. Stupid science. With intent I lean down and touch the tyre hub, imaging the portal, with my bleeding hand. I feel unsteady.

The tyre is gone, and I stumble forward.

I am back where I began but on the other side of my original portal by the laundry.

It worked! Again!

I feel drained yet elated.

It worked! It worked! It worked!

I do a dance thanking the moon for her assistance while holding onto my pants that keep wanting to fall.

I go inside.

Only where is the pain that for years had been my constant companion? I feel good. Is this the high that addicts search for? I proceed with caution awaiting the penny to drop and my limbs to betray me. Only they do not. I step inside as if I have wings, light on my feet. My shorts fall to my ankles along with the jumper and belt. I stumble and catch myself on the back of a dining chair.

No pain? I step out of half of my clothes carrying them into the bathroom, removing the towel from my head, only to be met by a stranger looking back at me from the mirror.

Well, not a stranger. I recognise her. She is me but different. Gone is the tired, strong but shapeless woman quickly approaching 50. Reflected back is a woman; shapely, wrinkleless, and not wearing the glasses that have adorned her face for more than 25 years.

Shit! I wonder where I left them, with panic, I look around.

Only, I can read the small print on the toothpaste and look to other things to examine without visual aids.

I grasp the basin for support, feeling dizzy. Remembering the importance of breathing in a rhythmic pattern. I marvel at the novelty of watching myself think this while re-experiencing the sensation of air within my chest. Reflected, is the best image of myself, from storage in my subconscious. The me that I think of as myself, only to become surprised when reality reminds me of the broken creature, that age and utility has created. Until now, here in this mirror, it is I. I have been transformed!

Before the wear and tear of childbirth and the calorie addiction of comfort, that smoothed out my tall, once curvaceous, form. Before I was shaped into a corporate cog for the machine of education and care. This ME