A dream brought her to mind, but this is not a Dream Journal post

The High School Sweetheart showed up in a dream snippet the other night - played, as usual by someone unknown to me, but who at least resembled the original. When I awoke, I only remembered that she had been in the piece of dream, not anything more about it. Then I remembered that another old HS chum (one of the two with whom I am still connected) apprised me a few months ago that this old HSS's son had died recently, aged 42, "unexpectedly." I felt so sad for her, and wished I could tell her so, and give her a hug, just for all we'd been to each other almost 50 years ago. But it's been almost 50 years, after all, and we haven't seen each other in all that lifetime, haven't been in any contact at all as far as I remember, so what would it mean? What would it carry? I'd like to think she'd be grateful that I'd remember her warmly (for I do) and kindly; of course for all I know she'd have to pause to remember who the hell I was. But I'm sad for her all the same.

Does anyone know how the "shuffle" feature on iPods works?

It amazes me how much music there is on my little teeny 16 gigabyte thing about the size of a large postage stamp - something over 3000 tracks. I don't even think about how they manage that any more, but the algorithms behind the shuffle logic seem really weird to me. You'd think (I'd think anyway) that with the same shuffle list going I should be able to not hear the same song twice in weeks worth of commuting (at about 90 minutes a day on the road). The thing seems to me to go in weird cycles though - lately it's been trying to convert me to some of the more obscure early tracks from Stan Rogers - when he was a coffee house folkie, and hadn't yet become the World's Champion Canadian. Some of the tracks are ok, but mostly I want to hear Barrett's Privateers and Northwest Passage and Mary Ellen Carter, etc. but it's tried to make me listen to "Picture of the Past" (or something like that) about sixteen times in the last four days.

 And Ramblin' Jack Elliott - now it's true that I have quite a number of RJ's tracks (mybe 40 or 50) but over the past couple of days every other damn track is Ramblin' Jack, and a lot of it's just not that entertaining. Why is my iPod trying to make me memorize everything The Carter Family ever recorded?

On the upside, the iPod seems to like Django Reinhardt & Stephane Grapelli as much as I do, so I can't complain there. If anyone really knows how that feature works I'd be interested to hear it.

In the event that anyone's reading this, and is the least bit interested,

The novel (working title is "The Willing Detective") is at about 80-85% first-draft-complete. I amaze myself. What's daunting, and has been part of a huge learning experience, is that stringing words together cleverly is such a small part of writing a sustained work of fiction. Well maybe not "such a small part" it's clearly sine qua non but it's so far from what there is to it. I'm eager to finish the first draft because 1) I'm getting a tad bit bored with the process, and 2) I want to get started on the next one in a more considered, planned fashion and see if it's less daunting that way. I also want to see what it's like to be working on two phases of two pieces at the same time. I could get used to this.

Dream Journal 1/7/12

Another product of a tag-end of sleep. I was driving an old-time VW beetle. I can't say what year for sure, but it was white, and I did own a white one, a '62 or '64 or so, I think. Anyway, I was driving across a very long bridge; then it was snowing like hell, and then there was snow in the road up to your yayas. The bug performed well, even unto dodging around other vehicles abandoned in the right-of-way, necessitating detouring into yards-deep snowbanks. How the little beetle did it I have no idea, must have been my superior driving skill. Then it got bogged down trying to make it around a large piece of non-automobile machinery in the middle, after passing through a thoroughly red light at an intersection (brakes failed to stop it, fortunately the roadway through the intersection was snow-free and there was no visible traffic for miles in any direction.)

Then woke up.