for no good reason
June 21, 2002 07:01 AM

Yesterday evening I was at the hair salon.

I had my hair cut completely unlike it was. Not completely, I guess, because I have short hair and it can only be but so different. But it's different. For no good reason.

I hadn't even planned on changing my hair prior to having it washed. There was this question. There was this flurry of magazine flipping. And a picture of new hair.

It lifts off from my face and neck. It is airborne. It will fly away.

I told someone that I take my hair very seriously. That's not specifically true. What is true [generally] is I take everything very seriously. I insist on investing everything with some sort of weight.

Does anyone want this large painted dresser? It's short and broad like me and has been so many versions of itself. It started off a white speckled thing, a relic of me at fifteen and the phase of committed girlhood and flat bowed shoes in a hundred colors.

I have defined myself by others and by the things I own. And I have defined the things I own by me. The dresser has been thoroughly defined, but there's no place for its broken handles and bright colors in my new blank vision of the bedroom. Anyhow, it's empty and so not needed. It needs a home.

I have a hard time parting with things. Even with hair.