Then our skin gets thicker from living out in the snow

The electric whine of a reversing Mini in the laneway. Something I haven't heard in a few months. I used to hate that noise. Now it's oddly nostalgic; a wistful reverse. The back door's been hacked to bits by somebody attempting to break in. All they succeeded in doing was busting the lock so bad it now doesn't open at all. The neighbours weren't so lucky. But then, this place was done over good and proper not six months ago, surely I deserve a little respite, at least until I get around to paying the insurance.

Poverty is relative, this I know. But right now I am relatively poor. Day old bread rather than new loaves. That sort of level. A day of quiet pain and riding fast on empty roads, letting the wind blast salt from the face. Watching drunken remembrance on Northbridge streets, and feeling guilty for sugar like maybe it was cocaine. But I have a plan, I have ways of making things work.

Bocce around Hyde Park--and afternoons curled up in bed trying to make some kind of sense of Neal Stephenson--made for recuperative public holiday weekend. Watched The Virgin Suicides again and got wildly jealous of Sofia Coppola's precocious brilliance. She may just be the great American filmmaker of this decade (which, let's not forget, is half-over, and thus we can start making such calls). When they write the Easy Riders, Raging Bulls of the 00s, she'll have a solid role. It'll probably mostly be about Charlie Kaufman's neuroses and Vin Diesel's shiny pate, though. And then Manhattan showed up on Foxtel this morning and I got to thinking about the genius of Woody Allen (and how I preferred his brand of genius to the Fellini on the other channel). And thought I'd write about it later.

Maybe I'm coming to Neal Stephenson too late, and I'm afraid of losing my cyberpunk props for even whispering this, but I think I don't like Snow Crash. At least, not the first 50 or so pages. It's all too obvious, too pre-programmed for geek love. Sexxy samurai swords and car chases and hackers swigging beer in warehouses while jacked into VR worlds where they rule as gods. A hero with the surname Protagonist. I'm scratching hard to find the soul beneath the perfect, flawless surfaces of Stephenson's world. I've been assured by many that it's there, but I fear I have made a mistake. Best, surely, to never have read it and presumed it great, than to have read it and thought it ordinary, somewhat less than electric?

I'll keep digging, but my reading queue grows beyond control--I must read Jack London, Vandana Shiva, Brian Aldiss, a great book on the science of cats, and an extraordinary book by Ray Bradbury on writing uncovered by a loving soul who knew that it needed to find its way to me. Because I have a plan.