An incident for Blotter Art

You can find moments in our past that shape our vision. Under-going my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna in early grades, an abandoned girl who, if she were still alive, will not understand how even in grade 4, she was pointing the best way to 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 another turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in class. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing 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 learn the art of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you wanted in order to save time, choosing far wiser to learn the tortoise.

But Anna was no turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali whenever we were still stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when people with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she may find no more passionate than Japanese prints.

I recall Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God understanding that the real writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. From the three, the blotter was probably the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon how you control a lot of it.” There is much else that would have to be controlled at the same time, as outlined by 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 checked out 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 quite a while, it seemed as though Anna had learnt her lesson. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it turned out the blotter that has been absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a location in the top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib in the heart of the location and watched the darkness grow; a few details together with the nib and the blotch became a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper and more dabs before the entire blotter changed into some sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

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

It was an early on form of Acid Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite see that.
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