The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

by John Koenig

hobsmacked adj. suddenly aware of how limited your social circles really are; that although your immediate environment feels like a microcosm of society, it’s more like a bag of exotic fish floating on the surface of a huge aquarium, which is teeming with a million shadowy subcultures that you’d be stunned to see up close. From hobnob, to mix socially + gobsmacked, astounded.

anthrodynia n. a state of exhaustion with how cruel people can be, freely undercutting each other in ways that seem petty and gratuitous—which can sometimes trigger a countervailing sense of gratitude for things that are kind, sincere, forgiving, or unabashedly joyful. Ancient Greek ἄνθρωπος (ánthrōpos), humanity + ὀδύνη (odúnē), sorrow, anguish, pain. Pronounced “an-thruh-din-ee-uh.”

Imagine how much courage it must take to come into this world all by yourself.

Life is short—and life is long. But not in that order.

aulasy n. the sadness that there’s no way to convey a powerful memory to people who weren’t there at the time—driving past your childhood home to show it to a friend, or pointing at a picture of a loved one you lost, only to realize that to them it’s just another house, just another face. A contraction of auld lang syne, which is Scots for “times long past”—fragments of which are still present in aulasy, but the meaning has been lost. Pronounced “awl-uh-see.”

You can travel the globe looking for memories and still find yourself standing behind a camera, waiting for the world to hold still. With every click of the shutter, you’re trying to press Pause on your life. If only so you can feel a little more comfortable moving on, living in a world stuck on Play.

echthesia n. a state of confusion when your own internal sense of time doesn’t seem to match that of the calendar—knowing that something just happened though it apparently took place seven years ago, or that you somehow built up a decade of memories in the span of only a year and a half. Greek εχθές (echthés), yesterday + αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), sensation. Pronounced “ek-thee-zhuh.”

Maybe that’s why we want to believe in ghosts. Maybe it’s just a fantasy. A fantasy that our memories are so powerful that they’ll leave a mark on the wall that would mean something to someone else and can’t just be painted over. We just want to mark our time here, to keep the rooms filled and the memories alive. If our houses ever feel haunted, it’ll be because we’re haunting them ourselves, trying to revisit all the places we once knew. As if there were something still there for us, something we forgot. As if there were ever such a thing as “unfinished business.”

Whenever you settled down to sleep, you’d find it hard to ignore the feeling of your heart heaving around in its cage, pounding out its rhythm, which only seems to get faster the more you think about it. With every beat, you’d feel your fortune being withdrawn, cent by cent, a steady deposit of coins rattling down into a deep metal tray. How long would it be before you’d start hoarding time, turning over every moment in your mind, looking for a price tag? You’d become all too aware how much life you keep trading for a pittance of salary, aware that tying your shoelaces wrong will cost you twenty beats, that posting a comment online might set you back three hundred, all of which might’ve been better spent elsewhere. You’d come to the end of a bad movie and whisper to yourself with some urgency, “That’s two hours of my life I’m never getting back.” Alas. You’re never getting any of it back. It’s the cost of doing business. And even if you could have it appraised down to the fraction of a second, its value would be no clearer. Time has no inherent value. If it’s a currency, it’s a kind of fiat currency, in that you can’t just cash it in for anything solid. Which means it’s up to you to decide what it’s worth trading for. It may be a blessing that you never know how much time you have left, because it leaves you no other option but to listen to your heart and get into its rhythm, so you can focus on the things that make life worth living. So go ahead: make every second count, ...

spinning playback head n. the disorienting feeling of meeting back up with an old friend and realizing that you’ve become different people on divergent paths—that even though they’re standing right in front of you, the person you once knew isn’t really there anymore. After the part of a VCR that reads the signal on a videotape.

inerrata n. a kind of mistake you wouldn’t take back even if you could; the reluctance to disown a broken relationship or agonizing experience that has since become part of who you are, and trying to disown it would mean you’re trying to live some other life. Latin in-, not + errata, mistakes in a printed work. Pronounced “in-eh-rah-tuh.”

epistrix n. a disconcerting cluster of endings that all seem to happen at once; a random barrage of departures and closures and divorces and series finales and celebrity deaths, which leaves you anxiously aware that the author of your story seems to be wrapping up an awful lot of loose ends. Ancient Greek ἐπὶ- (epi-), on top of + ὕστριξ (hystrix), a porcupine. To sit on a porcupine is to feel the pain of too many endings all at once. Pronounced “ih-pis-triks.”

Maybe that’s why your childhood could feel so intense, because you were steadily burning your way through a roster of firsts. The more you repeat an experience, the less you feel its impact, almost as if your brain is gradually tuning out the world.

ellipsism n. the sadness that you’ll never be able to know how history will turn out, that you’ll dutifully pass on the joke of being alive without ever learning the punch line, which may not suit your sense of humor anyway and will probably involve how many people it takes to change a lightbulb. From ellipsis, a marker of a continuation that you don’t get to see. Pronounced “ih-lip-siz-uhm.”

elosy n. the fear of major life changes, even ones you’ve been anticipating for years; the dread of leaving behind the bright and ordinary world you know, stepping out into that liminal space before the next stage of life begins, like the dark and rattling void between adjoining metro cars. Malagasy lelosy, snail, which is a creature that carries many twists and turns wherever it goes, trying in vain to outrun them. Pronounced “ehl-uh-see.”

wollah n. something you’ve misunderstood for years without knowing it—a familiar word with a weird pronunciation, a favorite saying that means the opposite of what you thought, a well-known factoid that was disproven years ago while you weren’t looking—making you want to stress-test the foundations of your understanding of reality. A mispronunciation of the French voilà, “behold!” Pronounced “wawl-uh.”

That our civilization is just an agreement, one that could be revoked at any time. That beneath our rules and quarrels, we’re stuck together on a wide-open planet where anything can happen, which leaves us no choice but to survive, to build a shelter, and find each other in the storm.

Surely there’s some adult somewhere, keeping an eye on things. But if we’re the adults, and there’s nobody else to watch out for us, it means we’re out here on our own, floating free. And no matter where you go, and no matter how safe you feel, you’re still treading water in the deep end, kicking away, vulnerable to forces you can’t control. Even now, the ocean of tomorrow is looming just outside your eyeline.

caucic adj. afraid that the rest of your life is already laid out in front of you, that you’re being swept inexorably along a series of predictable milestones—from school to graduation to career to marriage to kids to retirement to death—which makes you wish you could pull off to the side of the road for a little while, to stretch your legs and spread out the map so you can double-check that you’re headed the right way. Middle English cauci, path or road + caustic, able to burn or corrode living tissue. Pronounced “kaw-sik.”

irrition n. regret at having cracked the code of something, which leaves you wishing you could forget the pattern—longing to unsee an optical illusion, to unlearn the formula behind your favorite songs and shows and movies, or re-canonize a role model you made the mistake of meeting in person. Tahitian iriti, to translate + iriti, to be convulsed. Pronounced “ih-ri-shun.”

How casually the world discards our work, with nothing but a shrug.

Alas, even the world is not long for this world, soon to be swallowed up by the sun.

To the honeybees, summer never ends. They live for a few months at most, barely long enough to feel the seasons change. They have no need to remind each other to put themselves out there, gathering their rosebuds while they may. You can hear them buzzing deep in their hives, trading bits of sweetness they’ve gathered out in the world. How easily they pass the nectar back and forth between their bodies, freely mixing it all together as if none of it made a difference, knowing they’ll never live long enough to taste it all. And yet, their honey is the one thing that never expires, that never loses its sweetness. Maybe that buzzing sound is just another way of saying, We are here. From Tír na nÓg, the land of everlasting youth in Irish folklore + hubris, excessive pride or arrogance, especially toward a god. “Our songs will all be silenced,” said Orson Welles, “but what of it? Go on singing.” Pronounced “teer-uhs.”

A word is only real if you want it to be.”

String a handful of notes into a song, and anyone who hears it can be moved to tears, or break out dancing. But a note by itself means nothing at all.

But if you’re not paying attention, language can sweep through your mind like a virus, breaking everything down into neat categories and easily definable terms. You find yourself sizing up your life in reference to airy abstractions, rather than the reality on the ground. Sure, your relationship feels intimate, but is it love? Your work is interesting, but is it art? You’ve lived here for ten years, but are you home? You’ve got a lot going on in your life, but are you happy? Are you a success?

If you try too aggressively to sort everything into categories, the details of things don’t really matter. As a result, nothing feels unique. Everyone you meet fits into a handful of predictable types; every relationship becomes a kind of game; every work of art becomes a commentary on genre; every discussion of values devolves into squabbles over semantics. It makes everyday life feel faintly hypothetical, infused with irony, like you’re living inside a political cartoon.

This world is far bigger than the handful of places you’ve seen or heard about; your inner experience is far richer than the stories you tell yourself; your loved ones are far deeper than the roles they play in your life; strangers are more than just extras to fill out the background. No matter how deep you sink your teeth into things, you’re only ever scratching the surface. Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined.

make your words real, even if you have to make them up as you go.

To leap into the depths is a kind of joy. To chase an impossible dream is a joy. To feel anything at all is a joy.