In a situation for Blotter Art

You’ll find moments inside our past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna noisy . grades, a nice girl who, if she remained as alive, will not know how during grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here that comes in handy for folks and grandparents.


We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life might 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 with the use of ink blotters in school. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the tough way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience into a mud-bath. It took us months to learn the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you wanted to save time, selecting far wiser to try out the tortoise.

But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali when we remained as 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.

Going Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God and that the true writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by the way you control some of it.” There was much else that would have to be controlled too, according to Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down with the child, her eyes blue and hard 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, little difference 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 time, it seemed that Anna had learnt her lesson. However when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it had been the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a place at the top right-hand corner with the sheet; she stuck the nib down the middle of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a few details together with the nib and also the blotch had been a little bit of chocolate, its center dissolving into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper plus much more dabs prior to the entire blotter become a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

From her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines on this occasion, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to the next; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the center stretch without breaking the flow prior to the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat on her desk as being a chocolate web.

It turned out an earlier type of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael can’t quite note that.
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