An instance for Blotter Art

You will find moments in your past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna in early grades, a quiet girl who, if she were alive, won’t know how even during grade 4, she was pointing the best way to freedom of expression. There is a lesson here which will come in handy for parents and grandparents.

I’ve often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed if you use ink blotters in college. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into a mud-bath. It took us months to master the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you really wanted to avoid wasting time, selecting far wiser to play the tortoise.

But Anna had not been turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a method to Bali once we were stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she can find anything passionate than Japanese prints.

I recall Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God which the real writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. Of the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends upon the way you control a lot of it.” There is much else that needed to be controlled at the same time, based on Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down on the child, her eyes blue and difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a fast, thin line over Anna’s script; the blotter followed; there came more red lines, more words slashed away.

I watched Anna after she returned to her desk. She began writing, dabbing the blotter after her pen in true Sister Mary Michael fashion. For a while, it seemed as if Anna had learnt her lesson. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it turned out the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a spot on top right-hand corner in the sheet; she stuck the nib during lots of and watched the darkness grow; a few details together with the nib as well as the blotch became a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper plus much more dabs before entire blotter turned into a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

From her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion derived from one of corner to another location; she paused just long enough to thicken the center stretch acquiring to break the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat to be with her desk being a chocolate web.

It absolutely was an early form of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made nice hair get up on end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite notice that.
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