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

Plata Rasa

Slipfast

The Til

Looseleft

Jouska

Fitzcarraldo

Harmonoia

Foreclearing

Wildred

Treachery Of The Common

Gobo

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Nachlophobia

Spinning Playback Head

Anderance

Feresy

Falesia

Waldosia

Alpha Exposure

Lackout

Mal De Coucou

Pâro

Lyssamania

Elsing

Mogging Folly

Fool’s Guilt

Etherness