Many years ago, while we were living in the Philippines, I took my first writing course, a correspondence course I’d found advertised in a magazine.

When I received the course materials, I was surprised to find that the first lesson was on “noticing”. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. That is the first step.

That year, I was driving our youngest to kindergarten each day, a 30-minute drive. Since kindergarten lasted only two hours, that left me with time to kill in Makati before picking her up. Perfect. I could hang out at the pool in the US Embassy compound and work on my course.

I’d swimming a few laps, read the textbook, write little essays, and look around. When you consciously try to pay attention, you see and hear things you might have barely noticed otherwise. I watched the toddlers in the small pool with their moms, felt the breeze, heard the nearly soundless drop of a kalachuchi (plumeria) blossom, and watched the swirling dragonflies mating above my head.

Although noticing isn’t just for writers, painters, and composers, it’s crucial for them.

One writer who later impressed me with his detailed observations was Vladimir Nabokov. Years after reading his detailed description of a puddle, I still remembered it. AI found quote for me. It was in the early pages of his novel, Bend Sinister. The protagonist’s wife was dying, and he was looking out a hospital window at the puddle.

“An oblong puddle in the coarse asphalt; like a fancy footprint filled to the brim with quicksilver; like a spatulate hole through which you can see nether sky. Surrounded, I note, by a diffuse tentacled black dampness where some dull dun leaves have stuck. Drowned, I should say, before the puddle had shrunk to its present size”. 

Here’s an interesting description I once marked in another Nabokov novel, Pnin:

“… a pencil sharpener—that highly satisfying, highly philosophical implement that goes ticonderoga-ticonderoga, feeding on the yellow finish and sweet wood, and ends up in a kind of soundlessly spinning ethereal void as we all must.”

(Kinda creepy, but it’s obvious that he has noticed pencil sharpeners.)

Last week my sister and I walked through the lower end of Washington Park Arboretum, an area that was full of interesting things to notice.

A hillock covered with small yellow leaves, the tree in a commanding position but soon to be blown bare

A surprise sprinkling of tiny leaves

A squirt of Kool Whip in the sky and its rippled reflection

A white sky reflected blue in water speckled with leaves and crisscrossed with fallen logs and branches

Husky Stadium across Lake Washington, the two sides barking at each other.

A reminder of the Ukrainian flag, leaves instead of sunflowers

Angled shadows, time to go home

Thanksgiving is coming, which makes me think that noticing is the first step in appreciating and appreciating leads to thanksgiving.

P. S. Maybe it was the Epstein scandal that made me think of Lolita’s author. But Lolita is far from Vladimir Nabokov’s only book. Before his death, he published 19 novels, 11 non-fiction books, and 11 collections.