As I've indulged my newfound passion for metalwork and my reanimated one for cartooning and drawing, I've realized that a big part of my problem the last couple of years WRT the written word is that left brain seepage has overtaken the right brain requirements of creative work: it's the same thing that killed music for me, both when I left music school 20 years ago and the times I've tried to rekindle the flame since (and the reason I can't, no matter how great it looks, watch WHIPLASH: JK Simmons in the trailer IS my internal left brain voice, in words and in action).

Both welding and cartooning have become proving grounds not only for the import of Suzuki's "beginner's mind" but of the essential nature of letting go of all gaining ideas: the joy I've felt in practicing both these last several weeks (metalwork) and years (cartooning), in doing them for myself and myself alone and not for some nebulous accolade or token of communal belonging, has been beyond anything I've experienced.

And so I'm now trying to bring that Informalities creativity into this space, textually, much like when this site started and bore the original Informalities name: 15 minute text pieces at mid-day, after lunch, written, pubbed, posted, and forgotten, with no time for any of that left-brain fuckery to seep in. So far, so good, on that count.