Method: Book | Part /

Di was alone. Surrounded by friends but alone. Everybody loved her but only a select few ‘loved’ her. For the majority of her friends they enjoyed her company, but none of them would throw themselves in front of a bus for her. They hugged and kissed her but they were only temporary cures for her loneliness. The loneliness wasn’t just being alone it was an emptiness - a void. A longing for something that was missing from her soul - but that wasn’t really missing – just never there to begin with. Di tried to surround herself with people to compensate for the void, she liked the people that she surrounded herself by, but only a select few knew and actively tried to help to fill the hole. What could they really do to help? Where could they get the shovels? Where could they get the fill? Di didn’t know and neither did they, they just tried.

Di had gone to an art-crazed school. Every student tried to be more eccentric than every other student, that, or they were so introverted that they were regarded as muses because they were ‘deep’. Di was closer to the first type but quite normal almost banal compared to some of them.

She worked during the day and in the evenings she studied or went to friends or watched TV or wrote. Writing was a release, on paper she could be who ever she wanted, write to whoever she wanted, create places that had never existed before. She was the god of her own world.

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Radio waves were thought to be the discovery that would change the world. Their discovery in 1888, led to the invention of the radio transmitter, which was thought to be the ‘tool of the future’. It would vastly improve lives and every 20th century man wouldn’t be able to live without one. This can be compared to the invention of fibre optics, almost one hundred years later. Fibre optics lead to the invention of the Internet, which is also thought to be the ‘tool of the future’. And yet again it’s thought that it will vastly improve lives. Every 21st century person won’t be able live without it.

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Even with the Internet Method couldn’t find the meaning of life. All he got was various sites about the number 42. Forty-two? Was there some meaning behind this? What was he missing out on? He brought it up in one of his tutorials.
"DNA" one of his fellow students said, with a smugness that suggested that it was as simple as the amino acids that made up life.
"Wow some theory that forty-two is the divine number that effects the building blocks of life" Method thought as the smug student went on.
"Douglas Adams, or DNA as some of his greater fans call him, wrote a book called the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy where in the book some alien civilisation tries to find out the meaning of life by making the universe’s greatest super computer. The answer the computer came up with was forty-two."
"Has anyone seen the movie?" asked the tutor.
"Yeah did you spot the old Marvin"
"I didn’t like the movie I thought it lacked the British humour of the book"
"I thought the movie was great, that guy from The Office was cast well"
"So it’s just a number from a book, it has no real meaning. There is no meaning of life, it’s like the Holy Grail, it doesn’t exist" thought Method.

Method walked away from the tute feeling humiliated. Just a number, no real meaning. That was his last contact of the day so he started walking towards the civic bus interchange. He came to the corner of the street theatre. Stopped at the road as a yellow Porche went passed. Method had a habit of looking at the numberplate of cars. When he was younger he kept a large red book in which he wrote the number plates of all the cars he saw in a day. Car parks were a bit overwhelming as they held perhaps forty to fifty cars in line of sight so he eventually gave up. He had written down so many numberplates for so long that ever since he would instinctively look at the numberplate of cars. This yellow porches numberplate was 42. "Ha" Method thought to himself, "What a coincidence."

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Attention to detail can bring about very surprising nuances in ones everyday world. On his way home Method passed forty-two things relating to the number forty-two. It was forty-two minutes to five when he saw the Porche. There were forty-two clouds in the sky. Method crossed the street and walked up the path; the path was made up of forty-two slabs of cement and on the forty second one there were forty-two ants crawling out of a crack. Method walked into a bus-depo there were forty-two white lines that made up the parking spots. He crossed the depo and traffic lights passing an IGA store, which cheapest item, a chupa chup, cost forty-two cents – there were forty-two chupa chups left. He crossed Marcus Clarke Street, which was named after Marcus Clarke who died when he was forty-two. Method went into a newsagents and asked for a lotto ticket,
"How many chances would you like? You can get four chances for two bucks, that’s a lot more money for your buck than a scratchy. The most anyone that I’ve known that’s won from a two-dollar scratchy is forty-two hundred dollars. Where’s my friend’s aunty won forty-two thousand dollars from the lotto - that means you have ten times more chance of winning the lotto than from a scratchy." Said the woman behind the counter.
"I’ll take four for two then," said Method.
He had a one in 4.2 billion chance of winning. Behind him there were forty magazines with women on the front and only two with men. He left the newsagents and passed a café, which had forty-two sashes of sugar on the tables outside. He walked up to the traffic lights on Northborn Avenue and waited forty-two seconds before the lights went green, there were forty-two pigeons on the ground outside of building number forty-two of that street. He walked pass the pancake parlour, which was designed like a nightclub it had forty-two steps down to its level. Method was now in London Circuit where the civic bus interchange was located in the day and the Canberra club scene was located at night. In all there were forty-two nightclubs located in Canberra – four of which Method had been to the previous night and two of which he would go to that night. He still had time for the bus to arrive so he went to JB Hi-Fi there was an advertisement out the front for the DVD release of 42nd St also advertised was a sale of any two DVDs for forty dollars. He went downstairs into the yellow coloured money hole that was JB – Method could never leave without buying something. There were forty-two people in the store. Four of them were aboriginal and being heavily watched, for no good reason, by two security guards. Method went up and down the aisles of CDs, DVDs, and other electric gadgetry finally coming across a Pink Floyd album that he didn’t have yet – it went for forty-two minutes. Method left as the new Bright Eyes single - It takes forty-two muscles to frown - came on. He walked down into Garema Place to the giant chessboard. There were large black and white plastic chess pieces on the board black was winning it had taken seven pieces, white had only taken three – there were forty-two squares unoccupied by pieces. After watching the game for 42 beats of the bongo drum a busker was playing near by, he walked over to Red Path a shoe store that he had got his K-Swiss shoes from. There were forty-two shoes in window. He noticed a clean version of his shoes, they were only 125 dollars, and 42% off what his mother had paid for them. He walked down to the merry-go-round; it was closed for the day. Method remembered when he was a kid he loved riding on the horses - up and down and around – then it had cost him 80 cents or four twenty cent coins as he rarely had any larger domination. Now it cost two dollars fifty for one child or four dollars for two – what a rip. The merry-go-round was next to a big department store called David Jones, a sign out the front proudly announced that they had forty-two stores nation wide. Method walked away from the department store and merry-go-round back to the interchange. He sat on a bench made of forty-two metal slats. His bus rolled up, he got on, put his bus card in the machine and sat down on the right hand side of the middle of the bus. They passed forty-two cars on the way home. He got of the bus and walked down his street doing some maths in his head.
"Wait a second if you add up all the numbers in my phone number you get forty-two" he said out loud scaring an elderly couple he was passing by (They had been married for forty-two years).
"And my birthday is in forty-two days, and the longest I’ve gone with out sleeping is forty-two hours, so many coincidences." it was 42 minutes past four when he arrived home.
"That’s five things to do with forty-two" Method said, adding "I wonder if it’s a sign" when he noticed a sixth thing - forty-two pink flowers in a bouquet.

Outside Thom York rode past on a bicycle.

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Music soothes the body and soul. It can give as much, if not more, emotion to a person than images can. Whenever something especially emotional happened in Method’s life he would always listen to the same thing - Pink Floyd. He would listen to each one of their best albums in chronological order from beginning to end. And after that he would feel fine. This time no amount of Pink Floyd could make him feel fine. He walked from the forty-two pink flowers into the bathroom. A bottle of wine lay on the ground next to the bath also next to it was a glass full of what looked like water with lemon slices and besides that was another glass, empty, but caked in something. In the bath laid his stepfather. Two drops of water fell from the tap.

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Could it have been real? That night as he lay in bed his phone buzzed. It was Di. She couldn’t sleep and decided to message him - of all people. How did she get his number? It soon turned from idle "How was your day" to "Should I fuck him?" Life was just all to confusing for Method to try and be involved.

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Over time the midnight phone calls increased and the conversations soon got into a pattern that went like this:
D: How was your day
M: Ok
D: Just ok!
M: Actually it was good
D: Well that’s good; what did you do?
M: Nothing much – sat around
D: Same here
And on and on for about 4 hours each night. They would talk about their crushes, their potential boyfriends and girlfriends; it was unusual how open they were – seeing as they had only just met. Their friendship went on for about a month. There were casual meetings in the city centre – they did the rounds of all the cafes, which were all located within a ten-meter radius of each other. And at night they would do the rounds of the pubs and clubs, which were all in a five-meter radius and were completely identical to each other right down to the number of facial hairs on the DJ. They were a semi-couple until one night when they were waiting in a line at Moosheads.
"I want to have sex with you right now" Method said with one eye checking out another girl who he thought he knew.
"…" Di didn’t move.
"I’m going to go home" Method left the line and stumbled into a girl he knew.
He went home.

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Morning brought nothing. Method’s mind was a blank. After six minutes of staring at the wall: What the hell happened last night? After a further 10 minutes: Where the hell am I? The room was a slight blur and from what he could make out it wasn’t his. All the furniture and nick-knacks were his, but the walls… since when were his walls white? They were yellow and his bed… since when did he have a double bed? It was his bed but his sister was borrowing this bed – and it wasn’t his sister’s room either. He looked around starting to get worried. This was definitely his doona cover and his books and his CDs and his computer but this was not his room! He looked for his pants and found them hanging over his chair. He fumbled through the pockets and found a wallet – it wasn’t his wallet! He looked through it anyway – it had his drivers licence! He put the wallet back in the pocket and put on his pants and shirt – they smelt of cigarettes.
He opened the door of the room into a corridor it was long and had a wood panel ceiling. There were two doors on each side of the corridor – all of them were made of wood and closed. The corridor ended with a closed door identical to the others this opened out into a kitchen on one side and a kind of study/sun room on the other. The kitchen was yellow and had low over head cupboards. Method noticed a note on the bench. He picked it up and read it.

Thankyou Method for all your love and support over the last few days, Love Juxta :-)

It all came flooding back, Juxta his stepfather was dead, and because of this they had moved house. Method cried – he hadn’t cried for three years. The tears seemed to be like taps on high pressure the salty drops more like a spray of acid stinging his tear ducts then a gentle flow of sorrow. He fled to his bedroom and flew onto his bed with its light blue cover on one side and apple green on the other. As the tears moistened the sheets he felt something under his arm. It was an envelope. He opened the envelope and was all alone.

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Eulogies are the second hardest thing to write. The first hardest thing to write is a reply to a break up letter. Method wrote both on the same day, he wrote the reply first and the eulogy second – it was the worst day of his life. Di wrote him a letter saying that things were not working out with them and that she never wanted to see or hear from him again. He replied even though she asked not to – he felt he couldn’t just end a relationship without a rebuttal – especially one that he thought had been going so good.

She started her letter with "You probably think it’s odd that I’m writing you a letter". He ended it with "see you on the dark side of the moon." Ironically he would.

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Tuesday the 3rd of May was the day of the funeral. Method had been to funerals before but they had been for a distant aunt or an acutance, not a person he had seen every day – not a person who should have lived to they were eighty but for some reason found it sensible to end their life at forty.

As he walked up the steps to the funeral hall he could hear hushed voices, they weighed down his throat. The words were getting sucked into him and forming clumps of what seemed like other people’s phlegm. He wanted to cry but felt he had to be strong – his mother was doing all the crying for him. His tears just sat like honey behind his eyes.

When Method was called up to say a few words he looked down at what he had prepared and forgot how to read. The letters blurred and he could only think of one thing to say.

"My last few days with Juxta were the best days I’d ever spent with him. I wish they never ended"

God Speed You Black Emperor played over speakers as the funeral drew to an end - the end of a life and the end of a man.

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Reticent was how someone would describe Method at this point in his life. Method didn’t know what reticent meant but it was apt for this time of confusion – he was starting to wonder if he ever knew what anything meant. It felt like he had forgotten things, basic things, like the number of days in a year or someone’s birthday or who Nelson Mandala is. Surely he was too young to be getting alzhimers so it must just be stress or laziness – he needed to think more.

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Understudying was Method’s subconscious solution to his stepfather’s death - not that death needs a solution; most often it is one.

It was the second semester of his first year at uni. Method went to his first class cold and tired – it was the first time he had a class before eleven. The first class was ‘My Generation’, he wondered how long the unit would last, a generation perhaps. He smiled to himself as the thought crossed his mind and sat in one of the seats at the back of the room – Method followed it. It was funny how they were seated at school desks as opposed to the lecture desks that were being phased in – it reminded him of high school – something he didn’t want to be reminded of.

A tall slim woman aged about forty-fifty with blonde greying hair walked into the room. She stood at the front of the class facing the white board and wrote in big letters these words: ‘Here we are now entertain us’
"Who said these words?" she asked, there was a silence, she looked around at her students – most of them still hadn’t found a seat. She turned back around and wrote another set of words ‘Come as you are, as you were, as I want you to be, as a friend’. She turned around again facing the now intimidated students.
"I’m so happy cause today I found some friends – they’re in my head". Everyone in the group looked at each other – some of them with raised eyebrows.
"Curt Cobain" Method blurted out, making the person in front of him jump.
"I see someone’s in the right class" she said.

Her name was Bé.

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Everything’s in its right place. That is how it was and that is how it is… until the universe is disrupted.