You will find moments in your past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna during the early grades, an abandoned girl who, if she were alive, does not understand how during grade 4, she was pointing the best way to freedom of expression. There’s a lesson here which comes in handy for fogeys and grandparents.
We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken another turn had she lived her early grades in the sixties in the event the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters at school. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into 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 time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.
But Anna was no turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a way to Bali whenever we were stuck in the grade 3 reader; in the fourth grade, when people with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she could find nothing more passionate than Japanese prints.
From the Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God understanding that the true writer would find his share of godliness in the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. In the three, the blotter was essentially the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon how you control the ink.” There was anything more that needed to be controlled too, based on Sister Mary Michael. Reading Anna’s essay on why she liked chocolates, Sister became very still and angular. She peered down on the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”
When Anna looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a quick, 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. When I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it absolutely 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 during the spot and watched the darkness grow; a couple of details with the nib along with the blotch had been a part of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches on the absorbent paper plus much more dabs before the entire blotter converted into a kind of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Out of her desk came more blotter sheets. As an alternative to holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to a higher; she paused just long enough to thicken the very center stretch having to break the flow before the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat for my child desk just like a chocolate web.
It was a young type of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made your hair stand on end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite note that.
Check out about Blotter Art Company go to see our internet page: check here