Edward’s Diary Entry 92: More on Roman and Gothic “I’s” …

Roman "I"

I took a Times Roman “I” and a Helvetica “I” and saw that our current psychology is based on this like a rock. After all, a person, an “individual”, means “not further divisible”. We are one, they say. But, as in Mark 5:6-13, “And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.” And some writers have mentioned the many “I’s” in us, as if we had various "egos", but it is not that; it seems rather to be that every thought, sensation and feeling takes the mental position of an “I” and battles it out however it can; some will be stronger and others weaker, and hence all our contradictions.

So we modern people are not as unified or as compact as this “I” seems to indicate. This letter is just one stroke; in fact, the simplest stroke in the whole alphabet. That would seem to be appropriate for something as a basic as an “I”, which, by the way, is one of the most frequently used words in the English language, ranking at number 10 in frequency out of all words, after “the”, “be”, “and”, “of”, “a”, “in”, “to”, “have” and “it”, scientifically proven by today’s digital means (Corpus ofContemporary American English (COCA)). Very basic, very simple, very compact.

And yet there is something not quite true here. Surely we, as “I”s, are more complicated than this simple stroke? Perhaps in an ideal world, we would be as simple as that: one supreme “I” sensing, being and controlling our worlds. But alas, upon inquiry, we find this not to be true. Instead of this single “I”, our thoughts, feelings and sensations come and go as if on a windy day, first this way, then that way, like the other letters of the alphabet with their curved, rounded, diagonal, perpendicular, horizontal and vertical directions, filling our minds, sprouting up from seeds which an unknown sower has planted in hidden fields within.

The first “I” above, in Roman Times font, a “serif” typeface (meaning with projections), is also untrue in a spiritual sense, as the bottom serif or projection is the same size as the top serif, seeming to indicate parity between the “lower” and “higher” worlds of the “I”. In today’s culture in fact, the bottom serif or base should actually be larger than the top one, because we are so firmly based in the material world and pay little attention to things spiritual. I was not able to find a typeface that corresponded to this, only a decorative one called “Ravie” (left), a rather comical script with a slightly larger base than the top, which at least has a certain lilt to it, perhaps signifying joy in looking upwards! All the other typefaces have “I’s” with tops and bottoms that are just about equivalent in size.

 So it was a real surprise to find and see this monumental Gothic “I”...

Because this "I" seemed to tell another story about our psychic makeup. It took it as a symbol and looked at it carefully and found many similarities with classic spiritual quests…

(to be continued…)