I first started to develop the Rose language when I was in high school—as a way to protect my thoughts. I was in the usual throes of adolescence—who am I and what am I doing here? were my main questions. But I was living on the streets, couch surfing in other’s homes, sleeping in libraries, open buildings, a spare bit of someone’s garden. And thus I had no possessions—anything could be stripped from me at any time. And thus no way to keep that little locked diary so precious to anxious teenagers. So I wrote in a code.
But then… ahh… paranoia stepped in. What if someone sees the “I” in here so many times (because of course, my anguish was all about me)? Well, ok. I’ll have two symbols for I, one only used for a personal pronoun, and the other for an impersonal i. But this distinction quickly grew in my mind. I {personal} became my heart, my soul, my innermost being. I {impersonal} became embracing the world, an outer self, a being outside myself.
I: Self
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Then of course, there are the e’s—so many e’s—in English. So let’s hide some of these. Well, it would be useful to distinguish between past and present and future—a convenient way to put a time into a word without worrying about tense. And es with more lines became more distant in the past or the future. Then a curve at the top of the line indicated a what-if: a possible –-and probably different—past or present or future. And so e could be written in at least 6 ways (and more, with various combinations). And now I could shade my meanings.
E: Time
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