There are moments within our past that shape our vision. Under-going my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna in early grades, a basic girl who, if she remained as alive, will not understand how even during grade 4, she was pointing the way to freedom of expression. There exists a lesson here links in handy for folks and grandparents.

I have often wondered if Anna’s life could have taken a different turn had she lived her early grades within the sixties if the ballpoint pen, replacing the fountain pen, dispensed by using ink blotters in class. Kids of the fifties, we learnt writing the tough way–with steel-nibbed pens which we drizzled with ink pots and which invariably turned the writing experience in to a mud-bath. It took us months to understand the art of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; should you really wanted to save lots of time, selecting far wiser to experience the tortoise.

But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a means to Bali if we remained as stuck within the grade 3 reader; within the fourth grade, when individuals with older siblings counseled me agog over Elvis, she can find nothing 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 knowning that the true writer would find his share of godliness within the holy trinity of pen, paper and blotter. With the three, the blotter was one of the most indispensable. “Why?” we asked. “Good writing depends on the method that you control the ink.” There was clearly much else that needed to be controlled too, in accordance with 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 difficult above her spectacles. “Too many adjectives,” she snapped. “Too many words!”

When Anna viewed her, unmoved, Sister retrieved her pen. The nib drew an easy, little difference 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. However when I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it was the blotter that was absorbing her interest. She had dribbled a place on the top right-hand corner with the sheet; she stuck the nib in the center of lots of and watched the darkness grow; several details together with the nib and also the blotch was a little bit of chocolate, its center dissolving in to a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches about the absorbent paper plus much more dabs until the entire blotter become a type of chocolate swiss-cheese.

From her desk came more blotter sheets. Rather than holes, she made lines this time around, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to a higher; she paused just long enough to thicken the center stretch acquiring to break the flow until the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat for my child desk like a chocolate web.

It was an early on type of Blotter Art Company, so distinctive it made flowing hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael can’t quite observe that.
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