It all started with a cough. But the cough started with a cold pineapple juice. The pineapple juice was a consequence of the wedding and the wedding started with CAA-NRC. CAA-NRC cant be talked about without talking about the Elephants and Dinosaurs, or about the Giraffe, The Bear, or the Chameleon or the Pangolin.
And Then, there is the Mermaid...Ah... The Mermaid.
And I wanted to tell you all these stories and I didn’t know how to go about it.
This was something I jotted down in my journal to neatly copy-write into The Diary as a response to your chapter. I tend to write maniacally and profusely, over a singular block of time following which I make copious edits to my text over a period of days which extend into weeks.
I’ve got to say Ive went over the few pages you had written in the diary multiple times— Let me be clear here. I didn't actually move my eyes over the text a few times, but I read it once and I realised my mind was coming back to it more times than I thought it would. There was something jarring about The Diary which was calling out to me. And I felt that I had to figure out what it was before I could move any further.
The more I thought about it, it became more obvious.
It was something about the manner in which you have laid out things— or rather, it has to do with the restrictions of the medium of paper to storytelling.
The problem we face is that—our stories aren't linear— not quite in the manner, we have been taught to think of. The reality we have is intertwined into the past and the future. We don't want to talk about our stories in the same way books and TV tell their stories- lest we want to risk turning our stories into Entertainment Fiction - Fiction used to entertain ourselves, as opposed to Enrich our souls— this again is another detailed conversation.
To state the truth as briefly as it revealed before me,
Reality is Conversational.
Each story influences not just the listener and the storyteller, but also the other stories that we tell ourselves.
So I thought— How do I tell these stories in a better manner that will enable easier recall and recap? This thought was based on our last phone call- when I found myself giving you a quick recap about one of the earlier stories I told to you. But then I realised- this is going to happen to me soon too. I have trouble differentiating state 1 dude and state 2 dudes.
That is how this idea came to me— of creating an intertwined network of stories by creating a Wiki— An interlinked database of stories that are relevant to me.
The primary concerns regarding this method were— anonymity and privacy. What if somebody else other than the two of us stumbled across this database? Won't it be the ultimate tragedy?
I think I have a way around that. I will create worlds with words. I will encode ideas within our words and poetry.
I admit- this is borrowed from the Diary Romance that you had in mind - All I have done is migrated your idea into the cloud, and augmented it with the tools of text formatting and hyperlinks. I‘ve used italics as a means of imparting stress while emboldened text signifies that there is more to say about the word and that I would later re-examine what I meant by it and link it to another page to make the story lusher.
Where do I go from here, You ask?