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

Zielschmerz

Fitzcarraldo

Plata Rasa

Chrysalism

Harmonoia

Kairosclerosis

Treachery Of The Common

Ringlorn

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Wildred

Gobo

Zielschmerz

Ledsome

Sitheless

Hubilance

Hem-Jawed

an abstract image of someone touching their face

Fensiveness

Semaphorism

Daguerreologue

Daguer-reologue

a man sitting in blurred silhouette at a desk

Maugry

Moriturism

a person resting in the back seat of a car

The Mcfly Effect

Addleworth

Irrition

a close up of a dandelion

Volander

Blinkback

a wall full of pictures and objects

Lyssamania