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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

Zielschmerz

Wildred

Harmonoia

Merrenness

The Kick Drop

Foreclearing

Ringlorn

Ne’er-Be-Gone

Harmonoia

Treachery Of The Common

Gobo

Wildred

Covalent Bond

Emodox

Sitheless

Ochisia

Lookaback

Mauerbauertraurigkeit

Lockheartedness

The Kick Drop

Indosentia

Wollah

Malotype

Anti-Aliasing

The Whipgraft Delusion

Alpha Exposure

Lookaback