palace of winds

I have pictures of the haircut, both those I took upon returning home (i.e. the ones that look professionally-styled, since they are) and a few I took a few days later (i.e. the ones that look like normal-people hair). But they’re on my home computer, and I’m lazy, and everyone I’ve talked to in the past week who’s wanted to see them has, so. I’m well-pleased. It’s funny how seven or eight inches can feel like the whole world off your shoulders, if only in brief flashes.

As though obsessive step-aerobicizing wasn’t far enough outside of my character, I’ve decided to take up running. I spent all but $8 of my work birthday money on a pair of running shoes and some running socks. (Evidently it’s bad bad bad to run in natural fibers; it’s all about cool-max, though my affection for these particular socks grows from the way they snug around the arches of my feet rather than their cool-max-ness.) This is my second day of rising at 5:45 for intervals around the neighborhood, and I’ve found it an invigorating way to greet dawn.

I’m also falling prematurely in love with my shoes — they’re Adidas Boston Classics, and they represent the whole big pretty idea of being a runner in my head. They are leanness, fleet-footedness, far-away meditative-ness, self-posession. The two times I’ve gone so far, though, running has actually been about being viscerally embodied. It has been breath made cold and savage from shoulder to navel, the reality of muscle movement. Weight and effort. Later, perhaps, after I have built up my endurance and it is all auto-pilot, my mind will slip loose. For now I am enjoying it as best I can on current terms, discomfort and all.

I need to stay out of the store for a while, I think. I’ve already purchased not one but two hats for running, plus new shirts and shorts and a hoodie, and a watch. I sort of hate the watch, though, so I’ll need to go bargain-hunting again. I just want one with a good clear digital display, and a band small enough that I don’t have six feet left over after I’ve strapped it round my wrist. Especially if those six feet are all the scratchy side of velcro that keeps pulling various bits off my clothing.

Plus I sort of really want a new bike, which I was planning on getting this autumn. That was before the $92 on running shoes, though. But bikes go on sale in the fall, and if I’m near and fit enough next spring I want to start biking into work instead of taking my car.

Que sera. Speculation for another day.

You have twenty-four hours to not suck — i.e. to help me out with this whole hair dilemma.

(And thank you Bren! I’m totally bringing the reference pic from your cut [& your ‘after’ pic] tomorrow.)

Today is the grand send-off for the current cut. I spiral-curled it this morning, and today it is full of bounce and body and good-smelling product. And fear, probably.

I’ve been restless lately, and often that makes me think I may want a new haircut. And usually once I’ve had the thought at all it’s hard to make it go away. Typically I have my hair cut a few times a year, if that; when I notice the length has snuck up (down? out?) on me again, or when the seasons turn. I felt like the last cut I’d had was this spring, and it’s nearly fall, so I called and made an appointment at the Roseville Juut. (I’m both cheap and feeling a little adventurous, and it’ll probably be a cozier atmosphere than the Aveda Institute in Minneapolis.) Of course when I looked in my checkbook register I discovered my cut’d only been June 1. Que sera. Eleven weeks isn’t completely unreasonable.

Anyhow. I’m soliciting suggestions for what I ought to have done. I’m tired of always getting the same stupid long layers put in. I suppose that’s what I get for going in and telling them the same thing every time: that I don’t care as long as I can choose not to put a lot of effort into styling it, and as long as I can still pull it back. I’ve decided to strike that last requirement this time, though I still want to be able to just blow-and-go on weekends. I’m still too lazy to brave a cut that absolutely requires any sort of curling or straightening or whatever.

That said. I’m not having it colored, and I’m not shaving it all off. I want something that’s still young-looking; I’m not ready for those business-woman cuts. I shudder to think of having them. I have no recent pictures handy where I’ve got my hair down (the longest bits are nearly to my armpit and the shortest just above my collarbone), but you can more or less see the shape of my face in the entry below. I still haven’t sussed out what the shape’s called (i.e. round, oval, heart, square, rectangle), which makes most hair-cut-advice websites frustrating.

Anyhow, that’s that. I put my fashion life in your hands, dear readers. Reader? I’m counting on at least one, anyhow. That is my optimistic leap for the day.

My glasses came in.

Oh how spectacular! Neil Gaiman writes here about the opportunity to have your name appear in his own work, or the work of such as John Grisham, Stephen King, Dave Eggers, & etc. The whole of which gives me hope and warm feelings for the world at large.

Lately I’ve been in pretty much full-on freaking-out mode, which I’m sure is a delight to all of you poor, kind souls who have to put up with listening to me go on endlessly. I’m eternally moments away from committing the next three years of my life to working in Botswana or Jordan or Armenia or something. So we’ll see. Maybe I’ll be back in touch in 2008. More likely tomorrow, or next week, or next month perhaps.