Introducing Paul Burgess and his radioactive imagination!

Hello again, language cobblers!  About a week ago, I had a wonderful
experience: I was contacted by a man named Paul Burgess who was cruising the
Internet and stumbled upon CONLANG along with my own and other's web sites,
and we've had a lively exchange of letters since then.  He was astonished,
because since the age of thirteen, he has been working on a language called
mna Vanantha, or "Hermetic" in English, NOT inspired by Tolkien whom he
discovered later, and his interest in languages has led him through
investigations of linguistics, philosophy, and eventually theology and he's
presently a Presbyterian minister.  He's proof that there are numbers of
people out there (remember my survey!) that do this and have been doing this
in relative isolation (like me he thought he was alone in this endeavor).
He calls his invention his "radioactive core meltdown of the imagination,"
and he says that it lies at the heart of what he does and who he is.  He and
I share some interesting parallels: sticking with the same language for over
thirty years; interest in the Gnostic and the mystical; interest in
linguistics; interest in writing short stories and recording dreams;
interest in illustrating our inventions graphically and calligraphically.
But what REALLY AMAZES me about Paul is that he actually writes and speaks
his language fluently, something that I do in Teonaht with difficulty; and
that it has grown up with him almost organically.  He has written a book in
it called the Celestial Labors (mna Sipri Cilami) that he has illustrated
with wonderfully creative paintings, and he keeps other writings (in
English) on a rich set of Web pages that I'm hoping he will share.  He's
synaesthetic (remember our thread about conlanging and synaesthesia?), he's
got a wicked sense of humor, and he was so impressed by the caliber of
discussion and linguistic expertise on this list that he asked me to
introduce him before he just burst in on the scene like the rest of us did.
So I am doing that now with pleasure, and I hope he will speak up soon.  As
I told him, all he has to do is stand up, address the circle, say "My name
is Paul Burgess and I'm a conlanger!"  And we'll say "Hi Paul!  Welcome to a
group that will encourage you to persist in your not so secret Vice!

Sally
scaves@frontiernet.net
Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
"My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
http://www.frontiernet.net/~scaves/renuon.html

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