After dabbling for some time, I now have more to say about some essence of the art.

It appears ironic that I'm riffing about a Chinese art form in English. My written Chinese is shit so there's no real option about it. But meantime English is more conducive for rational expressions in ways that's probably not possible in Chinese. So let's hope what follows make sense.

It's not clear why I have some appreciation for calligraphy. It's not a leftover unfulfilled interest from childhood. As kids we were made to write everyday for homework. I didn't hate it but the experience felt like dreadful labor. I hardly learned anything then because hardly anything was taught.

So exploring why the psyche is mildly attracted to this makes an interesting self-discovery inquiry.

One clue could be about digital detoxification. It's legit but not at all a compelling motive.

Another clue is about mind calibration. I've came to find out that after I'm done with a session of calligraphy, I unintentionally did it as a replacement for meditation.

There's also some corollary to me playing Street Fighter. Where Street Fighter is the closest thing I can do to playing a musical instrument (I have zero talent in it); calligraphy is the closest thing I have to painting (zero talent there too).

But calligraphy isn't about writing words; like how painting isn't about drawing pictures.

The one non-obvious thing I've found out about this art is this: the written outcome of calligraphy is simply the marks left behind by a much larger kinetic dance of brush that's not visible to the viewer.

Take a ballet dance. An entire dance sequence could be superbly choreographed and well executed, but you're only allowed to see the resulting footprints on the floor. That is what you get when you're only seeing the written brush strokes.

The art of calligraphy is really a dance, a control/non-control of heaviness and speed of the brush.

My writings at their worst reek of clumsiness at control, the rigidity is so apparent it's cringe.

Mastery would mean having done so much writing that one can replay an entire dance from looking at someone else writing. This I am nowhere near capable of.

Writing characters in proper form is much less interesting than writing cursive. But writing good cursive requires being able to write in proper form first. It's about knowing the rules before being qualified to break them. I've consistently jumped the gun on this one.

This is a result I'm least embarrassed about, to date.