You can find moments in your past that shape our vision. Experiencing my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in early grades, a basic girl who, if she were still alive, does not discover how even just in grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here that comes in handy for parents and grandparents.
I’ve often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades from the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in class. Kids 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 master the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you really wanted in order to save time, you’d be far wiser to experience the tortoise.
But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring ways to Bali once we were still stuck from the grade 3 reader; from the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she might find no more 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 writer would find his share of godliness from the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. Of the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on how you control a lot of it.” There were anything more that must be controlled as well, 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 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 an easy, 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 as if Anna had learnt her lesson. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I pointed out that it was the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a spot in the top right-hand corner of the sheet; she stuck the nib down the middle of lots of and watched the darkness grow; a number of details together with the nib and also the blotch had been a part of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches around the absorbent paper and much more dabs before the entire blotter changed into a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Out of her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion in one corner to a higher; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the very center stretch acquiring 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 like a chocolate web.
It had been an early on form of Acid Art, so distinctive it made flowing hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite see that.
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