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 glimpse of Anna in the early grades, a basic girl who, if she were still alive, doesn’t understand how even just in grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. You will find there’s lesson here which comes in handy for folks and grandparents.


We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life could have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades from the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the aid of ink blotters at school. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing hard 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 understand ale compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you wanted to save lots of time, selecting far wiser to try out the tortoise.

But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a method to Bali once we were still stuck from the grade 3 reader; from the fourth grade, when people with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she could find nothing at all passionate than Japanese prints.

From the Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God understanding that the actual writer would find his share of godliness from the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. In the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on how we control the ink.” There is anything else that must be controlled at the same time, in accordance with Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down at the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna looked over her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, 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 quite a while, it seemed as if Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it turned out the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a location on top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a number of details together with the nib along with the blotch became a part of chocolate, its center dissolving into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper plus much more dabs prior to the entire blotter changed into a kind of chocolate swiss-cheese.

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

It turned out a young version of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael couldn’t quite note that.
More details about Blotter Art check the best net page: click