In a situation for Blotter Art

You’ll find moments within our past that shape our vision. Experiencing my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna noisy . grades, a basic girl who, if she remained as alive, does not recognize how even during grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. You will find there’s lesson here which will come in handy for folks and grandparents.


We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken some other turn had she lived her early grades inside the sixties once the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the use of ink blotters in class. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience into a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the art of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you wanted in order to save time, selecting far wiser to learn the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a method to Bali once we remained as stuck inside the grade 3 reader; inside the fourth grade, when folks with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she could 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 real writer would find his share of godliness inside the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. Of the three, the blotter was probably the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by how you control some of it.” There is anything more that should be controlled at the same time, 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 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 an easy, 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 quite a while, it seemed as though Anna had learnt her lesson. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it had been the blotter that’s absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a spot on the top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the area and watched the darkness grow; a few details using the nib as well as the blotch became a piece of chocolate, its center dissolving into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper and more dabs prior to the entire blotter converted into some sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to the next; she paused just good enough to thicken the center stretch without breaking the flow prior to the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat to be with her desk just like a chocolate web.

It turned out an early on form of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair get up on end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite see that.
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