A Case for Blotter Art

There are moments in your past that shape our vision. Under-going my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna in early grades, a quiet girl who, if she were alive, doesn’t know how even in grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There’s a lesson here that comes in handy for fogeys and grandparents.

I have often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties once the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the aid of ink blotters at school. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the tough way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you wanted in order to save time, you would be far wiser to experience the tortoise.

But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a method to Bali whenever we were stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when people with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she can find no more passionate than Japanese prints.

From the Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God which the true writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. In the three, the blotter was probably the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by the method that you control the ink.” There was clearly anything more that must be controlled as well, as outlined by 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 viewed her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, 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 quite a while, it seemed as though Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it absolutely was the blotter which 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 area and watched the darkness grow; a number of details with all 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 around the absorbent paper plus much more dabs before entire blotter become a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Out of her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to a higher; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the guts stretch without breaking the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat on her behalf desk being a chocolate web.

It was a young type of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite notice that.
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