ramblings

I don't care I will write no matter what. I don't know why but Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment just popped into my head. It's a story about a deranged man who sinks into a guilt-induced fevered delusion - or "mania" as the English translation termed it. I love archaic expressions like that. A modern person would probably say "obsession" or "paranoia", but "mania" has such a visceral feel to it. It connotes a maniac - someone ruled purely by the craziness of his own miasmic imaginings. Miasma - another term that strikes a chord in me. It is a word introduced to me by someone I used to date. I still remember the setting - we were strolling along Marina Bay on a Sunday evening, watching the kite flyers refusing to yield to the ebbing gusts and retiring sun, and I was talking about how messy my room was. "Miasma" was introduced into my vocabulary then by my more literarily-sophisticated date. That was the last time we went out I think. I received a message over MSN a few days later from my date, complaining that I did not seem to reciprocate a satisfactory degree of mutual affection. I did not want to pursue it. The prospects of a relationship at that point in time with that particular person would have felt contrived anyway. That was the first medical student I dated. The second medical student I got to know and dated for a bit turned out to be living almost in the same neighbourhood as the first. More coincidences were uncovered after that. It didn't work out either because both of us had our fair share of emotional baggage. But it was from this experience and facing up to my own emotional baggage that I learned the most about myself. I know I am a better person today and am able to manage my current relationship much better precisely because of the lessons I took away from it. I think I have written enough at this point. I just needed to flex my literary muscle again, which has all but atrophied over the past few weeks of intellectual ennui. Apropos of my previous post, I hope the figurative nib of my mental pen has now been sufficiently lubricated by this deliberate exercise in rambling.