So much revolved around feelings of connection, but the issues were so tangled up that he could never make any sense out of them, even after the needs slowly fell away like the receding of a tide, leaving the shoals and scattered wreckage finally exposed. Was it an end or a means, was a symmetry of needs at play or a strong asymmetry, was it existential, anamnesic or mimetic, were strong emotions an integral part of it or an epiphenomenon, were his transports prompted by something real and mutual or entirely imagined, was it ennobling or debasing, an adventure or an escape? He could never say, every position seemed to be the final truth at some time. It was like finding himself in a large house with long corridors and rooms where he wandered mostly alone and where the other would continually appear in odd directions, coming towards him, entering just as he left or leaving just as he entered, or blocking a way, or seen from a window walking mysteriously across the surrounding park. Most disturbing of all were the rooms where he encountered other versions of himself, ones that he thought he'd left behind, but which had gone on living, alone and unseen, nurturing their own obscure treasures,  unchanged and unappeased.