Hidden Relevance

My husband offered to retrieve my passport for me. It was in a cabinet where my cat hangs out, and when he returned he didn't comment on the kitty litter I'd failed to sweep up or the thermostat's temperature. Could it be he didn't notice these things?

I'm getting ready to send out a chapter for critique, and I was thinking about the chapter's inventory. Just for fun, I compiled a few lists of nouns to see what they might reveal about the chapter depending on which ones I chose.

List 1: whore,  scissors, funeral, skeleton, blood,
List 2: tunic, chignon, heels, suit, bling
List 3: diary, teen, grandmother, mother, kitchen
List 4: cross, lilies, light, choir, hymn
List 5: nutcase, bra, satin, headboard, elevator

Each list suggests something different about the chapter and I imagine each list would mean different things to different readers. It's kind of like real life. I might notice the Mustang, you might notice the truck. I might taste the garlic, you might taste the ginger. What you get out of one chapter or book might be entirely different from my interpretation. That's what makes the world go 'round, they say. And it's also what makes word choice in writing so important. The words we choose may have more or less relevance than we'd anticipated or even noticed.

When my husband came back with my passport, he also didn't ask whether the dishes in the dishwasher were clean or dirty or when I was planning to assemble the chair in the box in the closet. But he did make one comment; he'd noticed the one thing I'd least expected. He'd noticed my secret stash of wine.