A Case for Blotter Art

There are moments inside our past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna during the early grades, an abandoned girl who, if she remained as alive, won’t understand how during grade 4, she was pointing the right way to freedom of expression. There is a lesson here which will come in handy for parents and grandparents.

We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken some other 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 at school. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the hard 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 find out the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; if you really wanted to save lots of time, you’d be far wiser to try out the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali once we remained as stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she can find nothing more passionate than Japanese prints.

I recall Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God which the writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was essentially the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on the method that you control a lot of it.” There were much else that should 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 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 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 a while, it seemed that Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it turned out the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a spot on top right-hand corner with the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the area and watched the darkness grow; a couple of details using the nib and also the blotch has been a piece of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper and much more dabs before the entire blotter turned into a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Out of her desk came more blotter sheets. As an alternative to holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to another location; she paused just long enough to thicken the center stretch having to break the flow before the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat to be with her desk just like a chocolate web.

It absolutely was a young form of Acid Art, so distinctive it made nice hair get up on end. But Sister Mary Michael couldn’t quite notice that.
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