You’ll find moments inside our past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in the early grades, a basic girl who, if she remained alive, does not discover how even during grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There is a lesson here links in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
I have often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades from 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 hard 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 ale compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you really wanted to avoid wasting time, selecting far wiser to learn the tortoise.
But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a method to Bali whenever we remained 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 anything 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 knowning that the writer would find his share of godliness from the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was probably the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on how you control the ink.” There was anything more that must be controlled too, according to Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down with the child, her eyes blue and difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a fast, 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 some time, it seemed that Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it was the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She had dribbled an area on 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 and the blotch became a piece of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper and much more dabs before entire blotter become some sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
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 from one corner to another location; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the middle stretch without having to break the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and the blotter sat on her behalf desk like a chocolate web.
It was an early type of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite see that.
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