The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

by John Koenig

kairosclerosis n. the moment you look around and realize that you’re currently happy—consciously trying to savor the feeling—which prompts your intellect to identify it, pick it apart, and put it in context, where it will slowly dissolve until it’s little more than an aftertaste. Ancient Greek καιρός (kairos), a sublime or opportune moment + σκλήρωσις (sklḗrōsis), hardening. Pronounced “kahy-roh-skluh-roh-sis.”

jouska n. a hypothetical conversation that you compulsively play out in your head—a crisp analysis, a devastating comeback, a cathartic heart-to-heart—which serves as a kind of psychological batting cage that feels far more satisfying than the small-ball strategies of everyday life. French jusqu’à, until. In baseball, “small ball” is a cautious offensive strategy devoted to getting on base via walks, bunts, and steals, forgoing the big home run moments that fans tend to enjoy. Pronounced “zhoos-ka.”

closest you’ll ever get to an objective point of view.

licotic adj. anxiously excited to introduce a friend to something you think is amazing—a classic album, a favorite restaurant, a TV show they’re lucky enough to watch for the very first time—which prompts you to continually poll their face waiting for the inevitable rush of awe, only to cringe when you discover all the work’s flaws shining through for the very first time. Old English licode, it pleased [you] + psychotic. Pronounced “lahy-kot-ic.”

exulansis n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or mere foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your story, until it feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

Spare a thought for poor Dorothy, the orphan girl of Kansas, who dreams in color but lives in black and white.

From Oz + the prairie, with you caught somewhere in between.

All those cheap and disposable experiences are no less real than anything in our history books, no less sacred than anything in our hymnals. Perhaps we should try keeping our eyes open while we pray, and look for the meaning hidden in the things right in front of us: in the sound of Tic Tacs rattling in a box, the throbbing ache of hiccups, and the punky smell that lingers on your hands after doing the dishes. Each is itself a kind of meditation, a reminder of what is real.

ghough n. a hollow place in your psyche that can never be filled; a bottomless hunger for more food, more praise, more attention, more affection, more joy, more sex, more money, more hours of sunshine, more years of your life; a state of panic that everything good will be taken from you too early, which makes you want to swallow the world before it ends up swallowing you.

heartspur n. an unexpected surge of emotion in response to a seemingly innocuous trigger—the distinctive squeal of a rusty fence, a key change in an old pop song, the hint of a certain perfume—which feels all the more intense because you can’t quite pin it down. From heart + spur, a spike on a heel that urges a horse to move forward.

vaucasy n. the fear that you’re little more than a product of your circumstances, that for all the thought you put into shaping your beliefs and behaviors and relationships, you’re essentially a dog being trained by whatever stimuli you happen to encounter—reflexively drawn to whoever gives you reliable hits of pleasure, skeptical of ideas that make you feel powerless. From Jacques de Vaucanson, a French engineer who built a series of lifelike programmable machines (automata), including his masterpiece the Digesting Duck, which could flap its wings and quack, drink water, and digest bits of grain into simulated excrement. Pronounced “vaw-kuh-see.”

nighthawk n. a recurring thought that only seems to strike you late at night—an overdue task, a nagging guilt, a looming future—which you sometimes manage to forget for weeks, only to feel it land on your shoulder once again, quietly building a nest. Nighthawks is a famous painting by Edward Hopper, depicting a lonely corner diner late at night. In logging, a nighthawk is a metal ball that slid up and down a riverboat’s flagpole, to aid pilots in navigation.

punt kick n. a quiet jolt of recognition that it’s time to become a better version of yourself, sensing that all the strategies that brought you this far are no longer working—that it’s not enough anymore to be cute or nice or righteous or tough—as if you’ve now entered a new phase in the game of life, moving forward with a completely different token.

fool’s guilt n. a pulse of shame you feel even though you’ve done nothing wrong—passing a police car while under the speed limit, being carded after legally ordering a drink, or exiting a store without buying anything. From fool’s gold + guilt. Also known as a reverse Alford plea, whereby you plead innocent to all charges but want the judge to know that you feel kinda guilty anyway.

endzoned n. the hollow feeling of having gotten exactly what you thought you wanted, only to learn that it didn’t make you happy. In sports, the endzone is the final goal, the end of the line—but at a certain point you have to drop the ball.

wellium n. an excuse you come up with to rationalize a disappointing outcome—telling yourself you weren’t in the mood for that sold-out show anyway, that your safety school is actually a better fit, that your dream job might have been a bit too stressful. From the phrase “Well, I… um…,” which typically precedes such an excuse. Pronounced “wel-ee-uhm.”

maugry adj. afraid that you’ve been mentally deranged all your life and everybody around you knows, but none of them mention it to you directly because they feel it’s not their place. From maunder, to mumble indistinctly + maugre, in spite of, notwithstanding. Pronounced “maw-gree.”

typifice n. a caricature of yourself that went out of date years ago, though nobody around you seems to have noticed. Italian tipi fissi, “fixed types,” the stock characters in commedia dell’arte masked improvisational theater. Pronounced “tip-uh-fis.”

proluctance n. the paradoxical urge to avoid doing something you’ve been looking forward to—opening a decisive letter, meeting up with a friend who’s finally back in town, reading a new book from your favorite author—perpetually waiting around for the right state of mind, stretching out the bliss of anticipation as long ...

ALAZIA the fear that you’re no longer able to change

apolytus n. the moment you realize you are changing as a person, finally outgrowing your old problems like a reptile shedding its skin, already able to twist back around and chuckle at this weirdly antiquated caricature of yourself that will soon come off completely. From apolysis, the stage of molting when an invertebrate’s shell begins to separate from the skin beneath it + adultus, sacrificed. Pronounced “ah-pahl-i-tuhs.”

the standard blues n. the dispiriting awareness that the twists and turns of your life feel new and profound but are not unique—marked by the same coming-of-age struggles as millions of others, the same career setbacks, the same family strife, the same learning curve of parenting—which makes even your toughest challenges feel harmless and predictable, just another remake of the same old story. A riff on blues standards, the catalog of the most popular songs in the blues genre, which is itself famous for chord progressions that cycle through variations on a theme.

insoucism n. the inability to decide how much sympathy your situation really deserves, knowing that so many people have it far worse and others far better, that some people would need years of therapy to overcome what you have, while others would barely think to mention it in their diary that day. French soucis, worries + insouciance, indifference. Who knows what an ordinary person should be expected to handle? Perhaps human life is so tough that we all deserve some sympathy. Or perhaps it’s such a privilege to be alive at all that none of us has the right to complain. Pronounced “in-soo-siz-uhm.”

Inside your head, you imagine yourself as a shade of neutral gray that just happens to reflect whatever strong colors are nearby. Of course, your family and friends would insist you’re anything but neutral, painting you with the same broad brush you use to paint them: you’re a sunny yellow, they might say, or a chill blue, a fiery red, an innocent pink, an edgy black. They’re not necessarily wrong; you do notice a certain quality threaded through your personality, and often find yourself playing into it, because it’s a lot easier to be cheerful or crabby or crazy or boring if everyone already thinks of you that way. The trouble is, each of them only ever sees you in isolated contexts, inhabiting certain roles at certain times. If anyone tried to shadow you through an entire week, they’d be astonished to see you as a serious professional, a sexual being, a spiritual person, a story-time goofball, a nervous wreck, or the life of the party. Each of their impressions may be accurate in the moment, but each reflects only a narrow band of the full spectrum of you. Meanwhile, you shadow yourself twenty-four hours a day, in a variety of different situations. In what context are you most like yourself? Are you more or less authentic when you lose yourself in your work, pour your heart out to a friend, or are alone, just trying to clear your mind?

Maybe there is no single self to speak of. Maybe you’re a shifting collage of many different personas, each as authentic as the next. A kaleidoscope of ever-moving fragments, reflecting a thousand little impressions of the world around you, with flashes of different moods and vibrant clusters of quirks—but no broader pattern. Maybe you have no true colors. You’re not some finished painting, signed and sealed in varnish. If there is a “real you,” surely it’s the mess of paint on the palette: colors swirling and mixing and playing together, perpetually unfinished, searching and striving to make something new.

And you remember that you too are a guest on this Earth. Your life is not just a quest, or an opportunity, or a story to tell; it’s also just an experience, to be lived for its own sake. It doesn’t have to mean anything other than what it is. A single moment can still stand on its own, as a morsel of existence.

There’s so much that we keep in the back room; so much that other people never get to see. We only ever offer up a sample of who we are, of what we think people want us to be.

Yours is the only vault you can’t see into, that you can’t size up in an instant. You’ll always have to wonder if someone might come along and peer into your soul. Or if anyone out there will put in the effort, trying to find the key. We’re all just exchanging glances, trying to tell each other who we are. Trying to catch a glimpse of ourselves, feeling around in the darkness.

ochisia n. the fear that the role you once occupied in someone’s life could be refilled without a second thought, which makes you wish that every breakup would include a severance package, a non-compete clause, and some sort of romantic placement program. Greek όχι πια (óchi pia), not anymore. Pronounced “oh-kee-zee-uh.”

suente n. the state of being so familiar with someone that you can be in a room with them without thinking, without holding anything back, or without having to say a word—to the extent that you have to remind yourself that they’re a different being entirely, that brushing hair away from their eyes won’t help you see any better. Southwest English dialect suent, easy, peaceful, smooth. Pronounced “soo-ent-ey.”

Our days must be filled with these chance encounters, that for a million tiny reasons, never actually happen. Our streets must be teeming with accidental strangers, who just happened to miss their cue—who share everything in common, except for time and place. For years, their stories might’ve been happening in parallel, harmonizing from somewhere across the world, but neither has any idea that the other even exists. If two lines are truly parallel, it means they’ll never actually meet.

You never know how many things had to happen exactly right for you to meet the one you love. You never know how easily fate might have tipped you onto some other course, meeting some stranger, who might have felt like a soulmate. As you sit there on your commuter train, wrapped up in your own concerns, you have no way of knowing how close you’re sitting to the person you might have loved, who you might have spent years with, even built a family. You would have looked across the room at this same face, and struggled to imagine life without them, telling yourself that it was always meant to be. As if you had known all along that your paths would cross eventually. Maybe you were always destined to be sitting right where you’re sitting. Or maybe it’s a miracle that you managed to meet the people you did, knowing how many obstacles might have gotten in the way. Or maybe it’s nothing personal, and it was all just a coincidence. You never know.

Of course, you’d like to think you’ve got a clear view of the broader social landscape, but it’s possible you don’t have a clue. There are so many backstories that people keep to themselves, so many back channels you don’t even know exist. Random clusters of friends might be carrying on parallel conversations in another group text, or meeting up regularly at events you’re not invited to. People know far more about you than you think, holding on to secrets and rumors they use to inform your character but never mention in your presence.

After all, cui bono? Who benefits? For all you know, it might be you. Who knows how many colleagues called in favors to get you an interview or lobbied hard to save your job? How many little crises were happening on your wedding day that were deliberately hidden from your view? Protectors all around you might be sheltering you from looming dangers, so you never have to lose sleep knowing how at risk you really were. Your family might spend hours discussing where your life is going, comparing notes to figure out what you need the most right now. Sometimes your friends will wait until you leave the table before they all start singing your praises, only to change the subject just before you return.

None of us knows the full picture of what’s really going on. All we know for sure is that some mysterious force is working behind the scenes to keep our communities intact and our relationships running—sometimes smoothly, sometimes not. But we all sleep a little better, knowing some sort of conspiracy is afoot. Otherwise we’d be tossing and turning all night, haunted by the notion that we’re all just acting alone.

fawtle n. a weird little flaw built into your partner that somehow only endears them more to you, in the way that impurities dissolved in water are what allow it to conduct electricity—if all the imperfections were removed, there would be no spark. Middle English fawteles, without a defect. Pronounced “faw-tuhl.”

dolorblindness n. the frustration that you’ll never be able to understand another person’s pain, only ever searching their face for some faint evocation of it, then rifling through your own experiences for some slapdash comparison, wishing you could tell them truthfully, “I know exactly how you feel.” Latin dolor, pain + colorblindness. Pronounced “doh-ler-blahynd-nis.”

People sometimes speak of a relationship as a kind of union, but in truth, you are two separate people, with different lives, different bodies, a different past, and a different future. Each of you is a wholeness unto itself, with a tiny but unmistakable gap.

There will always be a certain distance between us. Maybe the cynics are right, and love is only ever an illusion. But maybe it’s the sacred kind of illusion, like the shimmering blue gods who appear to shepherd children. It has power, if only because we believe it does. And that’s enough. All that is required is that we keep showing up, and never stop asking each other, “What are you thinking about?” It’s not about getting an answer to the question. It’s the act of asking, of trying to reach across the gap, working through the mystery—that is what’s worth holding on to. That’s the feeling that must be kept alive, even if we never find the right words to express it.

heartworm n. a relationship or friendship that you can’t get out of your head, which you thought had faded long ago but is still somehow alive and unfinished, like an abandoned campsite whose smoldering embers still have the power to start a forest fire. From heart + earworm, a catchy piece of music that compulsively loops inside your head.

kuebiko n. a state of exhaustion inspired by senseless tragedies and acts of violence, which force you to abruptly revise your expectations of what can happen in this world, trying to prop yourself up like an old scarecrow, who’s bursting at the seams yet powerless to do anything but stand there and watch. In Japanese mythology, Kuebiko is the name of a kami deity, a scarecrow who stands all day watching the world go by, which has made him very wise but locked in place. Pronounced “koo-web-i-koh.”

We’re all just people. We go to work and play our roles as best we can, spinning our tales and performing our tricks, but then we take off our makeup and go home, where we carry on with our real lives. None of us really knows what is happening, what we’re doing, where we’re going, or why. Still we carry on, doing what we can to get through it.

catoptric tristesse n. the sadness that you’ll never really know what other people think of you, whether good, bad, or if at all—that although you can gather a few hints here and there, and even ask around for honest feedback, you’ll always have to wonder which opinions are being softened out of flattery, sharpened out of malice, or held back because it’s simply not their place. In Ancient Rome, the catoptric cistula was a kind of mirror-lined box whose interior appeared to expand into an infinite forest, library, or treasure room. Pronounced “kuh-top-trik tris-tes.”

burn upon reentry n. the bitter disappointment upon finding no new messages after spending hours out of contact, as if the world had barely even noticed you had left. From the tendency of spacefaring objects to heat up upon reentering the atmosphere.

momophobia n. the fear of speaking off the cuff or from the heart; the terror of saying the wrong thing and having to watch someone’s smile fade as they realize you’re not who they thought you were. Ancient Greek μῶμος (momos), blemish, disgrace + -φοβία (-phobía), fear. Momus was the Ancient Greek god of mockery and harsh criticism. Pronounced “moh-muh-foh-bee-uh.”

siso n. a solitary experience you wish you could have shared with someone else—having dinner in a romantic setting, reaching the summit after an arduous climb, having a run-in with a crazy stranger that nobody’s going to believe—which makes you look around for confirmation that it even happened at all. Welsh si-so, see-saw, an invention that can only ever be enjoyed by multiple people; when used alone, it’s just a wonky bench. Pronounced “see-soh.” anechosis

ledsome adj. feeling lonely in a crowd; drifting along in a sea of anonymous faces but unable to communicate with or confide in any of them. Middle English leed, countrymen, compatriots + lonesome.

In art as in love, one never knows how two people find each other, if they ever meet at all.

Just imagine how much courage it must take, to set a guitar case down on the cobblestones and make that first move, hoping it’ll resonate with someone passing by. To keep pouring your heart into something, even if it falls on deaf ears. Reaching out in the face of indifference, just trying to give people permission to care.

aftergloom n. the pang of loneliness you feel the day after an intensely social event, as the glow of voices and laughter fades into a somber quiet. From afterglow + gloom.