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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

Midding

Midding

n.
the tranquil pleasure of being near a gathering but not quite in it— hovering on the perimeter of a campfire, talking quietly outside a party, resting your eyes in the back seat of a car listening to friends chatting up front—feeling blissfully invisible yet still fully included, safe in the knowledge that everyone is together and everyone is okay, with all the thrill of being there without the burden of having to be.

Middle English midding, alternate spelling of midden, a refuse heap that sits near a dwelling. Pronounced “mid-ing.”

La Cuna

Slipfast

Harmonoia

Foreclearing

Idlewild

Treachery Of The Common

Zielschmerz

Ghough

Harmonoia

Ne’er-Be-Gone

Ringlorn

Wildred

Dolorblindness

Los Vidados

Incidental Contact High

Watashiato

Moledro

Lilo

Dolorblindness

Fensiveness

Heartspur

Anchorage

The Meantime

Alpha Exposure

Nachlophobia

Sitheless

Emorries