You’ll find moments within our past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna in early grades, an abandoned girl who, if she were still alive, does not know how even during grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There is a lesson here which will come in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades from the sixties when the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in class. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in a mud-bath. It took us months to master ale compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you wanted to save lots of time, choosing far wiser to learn the tortoise.
But Anna was no turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a means to Bali when we were still stuck from the grade 3 reader; from the fourth grade, when those of us with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she may find nothing at all passionate than Japanese prints.
I remember Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God understanding that the true writer would find his share of godliness from 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 anything more that would have to be controlled as well, in accordance with Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down in 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 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. However when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it was the blotter that’s absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a place on the top right-hand corner in the sheet; she stuck the nib during the spot and watched the darkness grow; several details with all the nib and the blotch was a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches around the absorbent paper and much more dabs before entire blotter converted into a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. Instead of holes, she made lines on this occasion, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion derived from one of corner to the next; she paused just for a specified duration to thicken the guts stretch without breaking the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and the blotter sat on her behalf desk just like a chocolate web.
It turned out a young form of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made nice hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite see that.
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