As I've mentioned before, I have the iPhone app "Zenbrush" on my iPhone. It's a useful thing for me to learn Kanji/Hànzì (漢字) and to be able to write them. It's a fascinating brain exercise: To be able to recognize Kanji (sorry dear, I learned Japanese first, and am only beginning Chinese!) is one thing, and to be able to write Kanji is an entirely different thing! The two areas of the brain that are involved in learning these things aren't identical. Furthermore, to be able to write Kanji one has to be able to cultivate one's "spatial memory" to an extent that is much greater than one uses for writing Western alphabets.
Anyhow, just take a look at some of the uploaded images on the Twitter site #Zenbrush. I am a total piker, a rank beginner by comparison. Oh well, it's not the point. I'm learning. It'll take a while to learn. And as I recall Suzuki roshi once wrote that people like me might actually get good at 書道 because we aren't trained to write perfectly.
That's comforting.
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