He was glad he had kept an adequate distance from the persons of his sharpest interest. He found a handful of words, even when spoken with affection, to be cumbersome and could easily imagine a plague of actual bodies. Why did he require fond assurances to be buoyant? He had never needed them before. Was his ensconced vantage the complication? While he avidly sought certain words of adoration he was sunk by unwanted words of interruption. As easily as he coveted some, others he scorned or ignored. Words followed him to skulk very close to his person, and this he found extremely problematic. After a time he concluded that all words were treacherous, either because he admired them too much or found their company disconsolating. Yet he found himself unable to exist without language. In personal letters he called his preoccupied somnolence a state of intrystuetter. He rejected common descriptions of his investigations as “mercurial quandaries” and also the words: tryst and infatuation.