A Case for Blotter Art

You will find moments within our past that shape our vision. Going through my childhood photo albums, I catch a look at Anna noisy . grades, a nice girl who, if she were alive, doesn’t understand how even during grade 4, she was pointing the best way to freedom of expression. There is a lesson here that comes in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.


We’ve often wondered if Anna’s life may have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties once the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed if you use ink blotters in school. 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 in a mud-bath. It took us months to find out the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you wanted to save time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring ways to Bali if we were stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when those of us with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she can find no more passionate than Japanese prints.

I remember Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an action of God and that the true writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. In the three, the blotter was the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing is dependent upon how you control a lot of it.” There is anything else that must be controlled at the same time, based on 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 checked out 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 a while, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I remarked that it turned out the blotter which was absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a spot in the top right-hand corner of the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the location and watched the darkness grow; several details together with the nib along with the blotch was a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper plus more dabs prior to the entire blotter converted into a sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.

Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to another location; she paused just of sufficient length to thicken the center stretch without breaking the flow prior to the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths along with the blotter sat on her desk just like a chocolate web.

It absolutely was a young sort of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made nice hair stand on end. But Sister Mary Michael cannot quite notice that.
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