You can find moments in our past that shape our vision. Experiencing my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna in early grades, a basic girl who, if she were still alive, will not understand how during grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here links in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties once the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the use of ink blotters in class. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in to a mud-bath. It took us months to find out the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you wanted to avoid wasting time, choosing far wiser to learn the tortoise.
But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali if we were still stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she may find anything passionate than Japanese prints.
Going Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God and that the writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. Of the three, the blotter was probably the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on the way you control some of it.” There were much else that would have to be controlled also, 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 difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna checked out her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew an easy, 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. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I pointed out that it turned out the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a location 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 couple of details with all the nib along with the blotch was a piece of chocolate, its center dissolving in to a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper and much more dabs before the entire blotter turned into a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines now, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion derived from one of corner to a higher; she paused just long enough to thicken the very center stretch having to break the flow before the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat on her behalf desk being a chocolate web.
It had been an early on sort of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made nice hair get up on end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite observe that.
More information about Blotter Art Company browse our new website: this site