So I got about a foot of my hair cut off a few days ago. I look different; however, I didn't think it was as different as it apparently is. Of course people I see every day are going to be able to tell, but I've been truly shocked when strangers notice. The two latest commentators are the woman who works the self-checkout line at the Freshfields near my office and another woman I see when I go walking in the park near my house in the mornings. The first conversations I've ever had with these people have now been about my hair -- if I like it, how it felt, why I did it, etc. And part of the reason I find it so bizarre that they said something about it is that even though I always notice things like that, I didn't think other strangers did.
Probably pretentiously, I guess I thought the reason I pay attention to random people's outward details is because I write. Books, I think, put more stock in physical changes than we can in real life... in fiction, if a character is wearing a bright new white pair of running shoes (as the park woman was a few weeks ago) and it's important enough to be mentioned, it has to signify something -- change of some kind, or renewed innocence, or I don't know, something less cheezy than all the examples I can think of right now. In real life, it just means that her old shoes were dirty or worn out, or she got shin splints, or her dog chewed up her other pair. Symbolism doesn't have as much of a place outside of novels.
Anyway. I'm going nowhere with this, I just thought it was cool that I get to talk to these two random people now. Um, yeah. How's that for narrative structure?
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