There are moments in our past that shape our vision. Under-going my childhood photo albums, I catch a peek at Anna noisy . grades, a basic girl who, if she were alive, will not know how even during grade 4, she was pointing how you can freedom of expression. There is a lesson here that comes in handy for moms and dads and grandparents.
I have often wondered if Anna’s life might have taken an alternative 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 class. Children of the fifties, we learnt writing the hard 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 master the art of compromise: speed meant accidental globs and splotches; in case you wanted to save time, choosing far wiser to try out the tortoise.
But Anna was not turtle. Her mind moved faster than light; she was figuring a means 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 might find nothing at all 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 understanding that the 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 is dependent upon how you control a lot of it.” There was anything more that needed to be controlled at the same time, according to 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 a timely, 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 a time, it seemed like Anna had learnt her lesson. However, if I peered more closely over her shoulder, I noticed that it absolutely was the blotter that’s absorbing her interest. She’d dribbled an area on the top right-hand corner from the sheet; she stuck the nib in the heart of the spot and watched the darkness grow; a few details with all the nib and also the blotch had been a little bit of chocolate, its center dissolving right into a hole. Fascinated, I watched her work more blotches for the absorbent paper and more dabs prior to the entire blotter converted into a kind of chocolate swiss-cheese.
Beyond her desk came more blotter sheets. Instead of holes, she made lines now, dark molasses lines dribbled and dripped almost spider fashion from corner to another; she paused just for a specified duration to thicken the guts stretch having to break the flow prior to the entire sheet became criss-crossed with tubes of varying lengths and widths and also the blotter sat on her desk as being a chocolate web.
It was an early on version of Acid Art, so distinctive it made nice hair ascend to end. But Sister Mary Michael could not quite see that.
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