The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

The word sadness originally meant fullness," to be filled to the brim with some intensity of experience. It's not about despair, or distraction, or controlling how you're supposed to feel, it's about awareness. Setting the focus to infinity and taking it all in, joy and grief all at once; feeling the world as it is, the word as it could be. The unknown and the unknowable, closeness and distance and trust, and the passage of time. And all the others around you who are each going through the same thing.

The Romans called it lacrimae rerum, the "tears of things." We call them obscure sorrows.

"I read the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything."

—Steven Wright

Scabulous

Gobo

Plata Rasa

Looseleft

Volander

Elsewise

Ringlorn

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Wildred

Zielschmerz

Treachery Of The Common

Harmonoia

Falesia

Waldosia

Nachlophobia

Mottleheaded

Dolonia

Fensiveness

Kerisl

piles of old books scattered in an abandoned room

Nachlophobia

Anticious

a group of men in hats looking at elevated signage

Zielschmerz

Anecdoche

Falesia

Latigo

aerial view of a city at night

Ludiosis

Winnewaw

a person wearing a party hat