There are moments in our past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in early grades, a quiet girl who, if she were still alive, will not understand how even in grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. You will find there’s lesson here links in handy for fogeys and grandparents.

We have often wondered if Anna’s life probably have taken an alternative turn had she lived her early grades from the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in college. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the difficult way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience right into a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the ability of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; if you really wanted 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 a method to Bali when we were still stuck from the grade 3 reader; from the fourth grade, when those of us with older siblings counseled me 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 act of God which the writer would find his share of godliness from the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon how we control a lot of it.” There was clearly 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 in the child, her eyes blue and hard above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna viewed 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 a time, it seemed as if Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it was the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a location at the top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib in the heart of lots of and watched the darkness grow; a number of details with the nib and also the blotch had been a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper plus more dabs before the entire blotter changed into a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. As opposed to holes, she made lines on this occasion, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from one corner to another location; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the middle stretch without having to break the flow before the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat on her behalf desk like a chocolate web.

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