There are moments in your past that shape our vision. Dealing with my childhood photo albums, I catch a glimpse of Anna in the early grades, a nice girl who, if she remained alive, will not know how even just in grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here links in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
I’ve often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties when the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed with the aid of ink blotters in college. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing hard way–with steel-nibbed pens which we dipped in ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in a mud-bath. It took us months to master the skill of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you wanted to save time, choosing far wiser to play the tortoise.
But Anna wasn’t any turtle. Her mind moved quicker than light; she was figuring a means to Bali whenever we remained stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings were all agog over Elvis, she could find nothing at all passionate than Japanese prints.
Going Sister Mary Michael, the composition teacher in grade 4, who told us that writing was an act of God understanding that the actual writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was essentially the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on the method that you control some of it.” There were anything else that would have to be controlled at the same time, in accordance with 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 looked at her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew a timely, 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 quite a while, it seemed as if Anna had learnt her lesson. But when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I realized that it had been the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled a spot on top right-hand corner in the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a few details using the nib and the blotch became a bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper plus much more dabs before entire blotter turned into some sort of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Away from her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines on this occasion, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to the next; she paused just long enough to thicken the very center stretch without having to break the flow before entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and the blotter sat on her desk like a chocolate web.
It was an early on version of Acid Art, so distinctive it made your hair get up on end. But Sister Mary Michael couldn’t quite see that.
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