i

• The engineer hates i.
• I hates the engineer.
• i is both subject and object.
• The engineer placed i not first not last but i between h and j. z is jealous of a, and a is jealous of z. a might be first, however z is last, and last has its benefits. i is the arm on the body. The mouth, nose, ears, eyes get all the majesty. i is the most mundane looking letter in the pack. i is not as intricate as q or as beautiful as w, i even loses its tittle and becomes even more mundane, if that is possible. There is no dramatic metamorphosis as with g to G. The lazy hand will omit the tittle. Evolution will eradicate the i as we know it, as the engineer will alter, and finally police thought.
• The Medieval Mind found no glory in i. The engineer in his labyrinth, illuminated by candlelight, with ink stained fingertips had no reverence for i. Man was under God and God was all and i was genuflecting and denigrating i, because i was flesh and God was not flesh and flesh sins against God.
• The engineer hates individuality. The engineer dictates uniformity. All anomalies are underlined, green, and red.
• The engineer hates Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Dickens.
• The engineer desires the monkey, the dog, the cockroach to write without verbosity, without style, without idiosyncrasies, the engineer wants i to write in clear and concise prose.
• I am more complicated than i but I am thankful we use i and not honorificabilitudinitatibus or metaphysicotheologocosmonolonigology. The engineer does not register these two words constructed by Shakespeare and Voltaire.
• The typo is i’s stand against the engineer.

Paul Kavanagh
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Paul Kavanagh is the author of Iceberg and The Killing of a Bank Manager.