Neurasthenic

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Tex used to suffer from chronic headaches. In fact, these have continued to the present day. He often refers to his headaches by saying, "my nerves are hurting me." "Nerves" Tex imagines as white or pink threadlike structures, an idea he acquired one day at the dentist's, where he was shown a picture of the "nerve" of a tooth. Once, having a headache in his sleep, he dreamed of his "vagus nerve," that is, of the nerve that "wanders" -- referring, it would appear, to a white thread that could have somehow pushed its way into his head from below and now might be walking around inside his head and in this way causing his headache.

Her secrecy and her darkness which he sometimes refers to as "the sedge" and "the moss," are the qualities that drew Tex to Stacey. The idea of a hillside being "fledged" with foliage, and especially the idea of such a scene falling into shadow as the sun drops peacefully below the top of the hill, holds a special appeal for Tex, and though he has never told her any of this, privately Stacey has sensed his interest, and colluded with it in ways Tex has never become more than dimly aware of, nor will ever entirely understand.

Fibres of the vagus nerve (right/bottom of image) innervating sinoatrial node tissue (central and left of image): high magnification micrograph image by Nephron, 2009
Moss-ground, Tiebel wellspring, foothills of Praekowa Mountain, Himmelberg, Carinthia, Austria: photo by Johann Jaritz, 2009