You will find moments in your past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna in early grades, an abandoned girl who, if she were still alive, will not understand how even just in grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There is a lesson here that comes in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
We have often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the use of ink blotters in school. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult 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 master the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you wanted in order to save time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.
But Anna had not been turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring ways to Bali if we were still stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when those of us with older siblings were all 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 which the actual writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by the method that you control the ink.” There were anything more that needed to be controlled also, based on 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 difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna viewed her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a timely, 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 like Anna had learnt her lesson. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it turned out the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a place at the top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib during the area and watched the darkness grow; a number of details with the nib along with the blotch has been a piece of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper plus much more dabs until the entire blotter converted into a kind of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to a higher; she paused just good enough to thicken the middle stretch without breaking the flow until the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat on her behalf desk like a chocolate web.
It was an early form of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made nice hair climb onto end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite notice that.
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