A Case for Blotter Art

There are moments in our past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna noisy . grades, an abandoned girl who, if she remained as alive, does not understand how even just in grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There’s a lesson here links in handy for fogeys and grandparents.

I’ve often wondered if Anna’s life could have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties when the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed if you use ink blotters in school. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the tough way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in to a mud-bath. It took us months to find out the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in the event you wanted to save time, you would be far wiser to try out the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring ways to Bali once we remained as stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when people with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she might 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 and that the actual writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is determined by the way you control some of it.” There was much else that should 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 at the child, her eyes blue and hard 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 some time, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I pointed out that it was the blotter that’s absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a place at the top right-hand corner of the sheet; she stuck the nib down the middle of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a number of details using the nib as well as the blotch has been a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in to a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper and much more dabs before entire blotter turned into a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines now, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion derived from one of corner to another; she paused just for a specified duration to thicken the very center stretch without breaking the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths as well as the blotter sat to be with her desk like a chocolate web.

It had been a young form of Blotter Art, so distinctive it made hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite notice that.
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