1.9 Learning to use ideocalligraphs

They can be written left to right, right to left, in columns facing either way or distributed in related groups within a chosen space, large or small. The stroke sequence enables each ideograph to do its work well. It can be written easily using a pencil, Chinese or Japanese brush, ball-point, dip-pen, felt or fountain-pen and pens cut from reed, bamboo or quill.

Learning to use ideocalligraphy can turn out to be an ongoing and increasingly compelling process. In time you familiarize yourself with the constantly changing steps of its ideocalligraphic dance - fitting ideocalligraphs and their strokes to meaning. Your search is not for the right words but the right lattice of thought - and then the ideocalligraphy to make it visible.

One way to get into this process is to choose for yourself from PART 3, sections 3.1 and 3.2, a small group of radical and composite ideocalligraphs. And another good way is to check out the Alphabetical index of primary meanings at 3.4 and find words you'd like to see the ideocalligraphs for. Each word you choose there shows its Group number and individual number in either 3.1 or 3.2. You will find the ideocalligraphs there. Practice for a while the stroke-order for each of your choices. This leads you naturally into finding new ways of bringing them together. Then just place all of them somewhere on a page. See where each might go in relation to the others. Re-group them on a new page. You are entering that space which precedes good ideocalligraphy.

The patience called for will be rewarded. The ideocalligraphs themselves will take you there. Be ready for a good number of drafts before your first message or statement meets with your satisfaction. When it does you will know it instantly - "That's it !"

Ideocalligraphy is at the service of meaning. It is at its best when its composition and aesthetics are in balance. There is a synapse between line and awareness. Ideocalligraphs have this tendency to merge. Good ideocalligraphy can give them an organic cohesion, enhancing their meaning in ways that the reader carries over to what follows.

The process of juxtaposition, convergence and exchange often prompts an intuitive sense of layers of meaning. Some composite ideocalligraphs may demonstrate an extended presence, deploying more than the summation of their primary meanings. Ideocalligraphy seems able to enter the area of turbulence between meaning and unknowing, between question and answer. It can at the least take you there. And that is where I find a use for it.