On the art of seeing in cnf

Description, scene, image.  These are the three elements of craft we usually first think about when we think about the art of seeing in creative nonfiction.  There are techniques for each of these that we can learn.  For example, we will talk about  establishing a perspective in a scene, introducing action, adding "texture," all of which are good to learn and practice.  But that's starting with the product rather than the process.  How do we, as nonfiction writers, cultivate the eye?  How do we learn to notice things, and pay attention especially to the things worth noticing?

This begins, obviously, with taking time to look.

Then, notice what might be "telling."  I emphasize might be because we begin by not knowing what is telling--those little details that say more than they say.

Here's what I remember about my father, who died in my twenties from complications related to alcoholism:

Dad was tight and compact with muscular legs from high school and college football.  I remember those legs when he wore shorts, particularly towards the end of his life, because while everything else about his body began to unravel--sagging face, collapsed chest, misshapen belly, and swollen hands--those legs still seemed tightly coiled.  When you're sick or old the body decides what parts of the anatomy are first to go.  This isn't entirely arbitrary, of course.  A dying person's heart, in an act of self-preservation ,  will withdraw blood first from the peripheral parts, beginning with the hands and feet.  Yet some part of this undoing, too, has to do with how a person lived, and until the very end my dad's legs stubbornly held on to the memory of running on grassy football fields in Winnetka and Rochester.  He was still running when he died  from some unnamed torment, and maybe this is also why those beautiful legs were the last to go.

Here's a suggestion:  See someone you know--a parent, a friend, a sibling--and describe them to see if you will discover what might be telling, as my father's legs were for me.  Post what you come up with.