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

Kairosclerosis

Harmonoia

Ringlorn

Ghough

Elsewise

Merrenness

Zielschmerz

Treachery Of The Common

Wildred

Foreclearing

Gobo

Ringlorn

Lilo

Incidental Contact High

Hailbound

Fata Organa

Symptomania

Appriesse

Funkenzwangsvorstellung

Funkenzwang-svorstellung

Knellish

Incidental Contact High

Galagog

Apolytus

Keyframe

Licotic

Kenaway

Blinkback