The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
Perhaps—just maybe—one of the most elemental and necessary books I've ever read.
Idlewild
adj. feeling grateful to be stranded in a place where you can’t do much of anything—sitting for hours at an airport gate, the sleeper car of a train, or the backseat of a van on a long road trip—which temporarily alleviates the burden of being able to do anything at any time and frees up your brain to do whatever it wants to do, even if it’s just to flicker your eyes across the passing landscape.
From Idlewild, the original name of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City
I. How it Feels to Read This Thing
Whenever we pick up a book, we hope it will somehow change our lives. We might not expect it, but we always hope to be pleasantly, enormously surprised by an experience that was more than we bargained for, in the best way possible.
Occasionally you witness a title that so piques your interest that you can’t help but straighten up a little bit. This is what happened when my eyes first alighted upon a small black hardcover, with worn gold lines and speckles that felt like a very old, very secret thing. “The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows,” it said. The name alone conjures arcane sentiments and mysteries beyond the day-to-day, and I knew at once I needed to read it. Now. Immediately. Something about the book’s essence communed with my soul.
Fast forward six months and I finally broke open its pages. Life, you know. In retrospect this was for the best. Made to wait for a more opportune time, I was able to approach the diligent madness of this book with a greater sense of opportunity and patience than I would have if I’d tried to stuff it into my, at the time, rather breakneck recreational queue. Much of its beauty would have been left unsavored—sacrificed in service of efficiency and moving on to the next thing. I have a weakness for checking off boxes, you see.
But I have finished, and started again, and found myself thinking about it with a folding, compounding quality, more and more all the time.
Enough preamble though. You and I are both busy, so I would not make you to wait, even if waiting is perhaps one of the healthiest things for us to do.
Let’s talk about John Koenig’s The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
II. The Way the Book Introduces Itself
What even is an obscure sorrow, and how in the world could there be a dictionary full of them?
Ecsis
n. the haunting sense of mystery infused into certain random details that beckons you to wonder how it ended up here at this point in time—marveling at a patch of white on a dog’s chest, a bubble trapped in an old window, a glimpse of Saturn’s rings shivering in a telescope lens—knowing that behind the thing itself is a long chain of causes and effects that veers off into the shadows of pre-history, anchored somewhere near the dawn of time, even though the end result is somehow right there in front of you, shimmering in place.
Indonesian eksis, to exist, to be. Pronouonced “ek-sis.”
It is, in its own words, a compendium of new words for emotions, with a self-made directive to define and articulate the “fundamental strangeness” of the human experience. Do not confuse the use of the word “sorrow” to mean the entire offering must be melancholic. That’s a reasonable, but wrong assumption.
The opening pages of what I will henceforth largely refer to as The Dictionary for brevity, are full of clarifiers, identifiers, and disclaimers in a tongue so astute that it feels as though it could have only been made by someone who really loved words, feelings, people, and the joy of understanding. The discovery of a word that captures how you’ve felt about something your whole life is a calming, rarely unearthed experience. Such moments can put entire swaths of your personality and world into frame, affirming you are not alone, not crazy. You’re an ordinary person navigating a bizarre life that you have no choice but to discover one step at a time.
Each word is either summoned forth by whimsy, or engineered by clever (or goofy) amalgamations of existing words and ideas across cultures, languages, and places that otherwise wouldn’t normally intersect, let alone for the purpose of divining insights.
It’s in this that The Dictionary seeks to unify—to bring about our disparate parts, and reveal the intangible lines between some of them, but giving them shape, definition.
Something that on its face is interesting, but becomes another thing entirely when you start to feel what those shapes and definitions bring about inside you.
III. How the Dictionary is Organized
First, we should spend a moment on how The Dictionary organizes itself. The Dictionary is separated into six tantalizing sections, each with their own flavor and identity.
Between Living and Dreaming. Seeing the world as it is, and the world as it could be.
The Interior Wilderness. Defining who you are from the inside out.
Montage of Attractions. Finding shelter in the presence of others.
Faces in a Crowd. Catching glimpses of humanity from a distance.
Boats Against the Current. Holding on in the rush of the moment.
Roll the Bones. Connecting the dots of a wide-open universe.
Before gliding into the waters of each category, we are treated to a thematically-aligned poem or literary passage—a sort of sampler taste of what’s ahead. They all have something to offer, but my favorite was (perhaps predictably) the Montage of Attractions.
Because The Dictionary was originally conceived as a blog series, with the author adding definitions over the course of years, these categories were added after-the-fact based on patterns that emerged between them. While this adds some nice structure to what could be an otherwise tumbling, aimless palette of words, it’s not strictly necessary to appreciate the results.
Speaking of words and definitions, I should probably give you some more of those so you actually understand why I’ve cared enough to bother writing this whole thing. Because most of what you’ve read so far has been a consolation to my real, but less practical desire of just sharing the entire book verbatim.
So, for your intellectual and emotional diet, enjoy if you will, this small charcuterie of definitions pulled from the text (no category in particular):
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.”
Amoransia
n. the melodramatic thrill of unrequited love; the longing to pine for someone you can never have, wallowing in devotion to some impossible person who could give your life meaning by their very absence.
Portugese amor, love + ǎnsia, craving. Pronounced “ah-moh-ran-see-uh.”
Knellish
adj. afraid to relax your body and drift off to sleep because you can’t help but notice how much it rhymes with death—lying flat on your back, your hands clumped on your chest, trying to force yourself to let go of consciousness, knowing you’ll almost certainly find your grip again, but unsure exactly how that happens.
Armenian k’nel, sleep + knell, a ringing announcement of a death. Pronounced “nel-ish.”
Loss of Backing
n. an abrupt collapse of trust in yourself—having abandoned a resolution, surrendered to your demons, or squandered an opportunity you swore you’d take seriously this time—which resets your expectations and makes it that much harder to guarantee that your word is worth anything, even to yourself.
In economics, a loss of backing is when the government no longer guarantees the value of a certain currency, particularly when it’s not exchangeable for anything physical like gold or silver, thus it only retains value because we say it does.
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 kairos, a sublime or opportune moment + sklerōsis, hardening. Pronounced “kahy-roh-skluh-roh-sis”
Hickering
n. the habit of falling hard for whatever pretty new acquaintance happens to come along, spending hours wallowing in the handful of details you can gather about them, connecting the dots into elaborate constellations, even imagining an entire future together—images that have no particular purpose, except that they’re kinda fun to think about.
Hebrew hikrín, to protect an image + hankering, craving. Pronounced “hik-er-ing.”
Fitching
v. intr. compulsively turning away from works of art you find frustratingly, nauseatingly good—wanting to shut off the film and leave the theater, or devour a book only in maddening little chunks—because it resonates at precisely the right frequency to rattle you to your core, which makes it mildly uncomfortable to be yourself.
From bitching, markedly good + fitch, the European polecat, an animal that often cripples its prey by piercing its brain with its teeth, before storing it alive in its burrow to return and eat sometime later.
Incidental contact high
n. an innocuous touch by someone just doing their job—a barber, yoga instructor, or friendly waitress—that you find more meaningful than you’d like to admit; a feeling of connection so stupefyingly simple it makes you wonder if aspiring novelists would be better off just offering people a hug.
In sports, incidental contact is a glancing touch that doesn’t rise to the level of a foul. A contact high is when you feel the effects of a drug vicariously.
As a peek behind the curtain: going into that last section, I had about 70 definitions of things that I thought would be good to share, and the amount of time it took narrowing them down to the ones you see above is about equivalent to how much time was spent on the rest of the article. And that’s after I compromised and stopped picking “the best ones” and forced myself to start selecting them mostly at random.
You’d note correctly that some of these are bound to strike more intensely than others. As mentioned, some of them are goofy, or quaint.
But let’s go back to “loss of backing,” which you may also correctly note is a full term, not a single word. The Dictionary has those, too. When I reached the definition for “loss of backing,” and the full gravity of its explanation poured through me like wet concrete, I couldn’t help but dissociate for a moment.
Between years of efforts to improve my physical fitness, and a long string of self-imposed deadlines in the rearview mirror, this is something that cut at the core. That intrinsic lack of faith in oneself is a dangerous, intimate thing, that once allowed so much momentum, is nearly unstoppable. I can feel it building within me, with each failed attempt to grow leaner, every year that I promise I’ll finally finish that book, every effort to give up the crutch of high-caffeine energy drinks that is almost certainly going to contribute to my death in some way.
The weight of that is…“crushing” isn’t the word. The texture of that shame, that mountainous self-doubt that I’ve built myself stone by stone is profound. It’s less that it’s crushing me, and more that I can never escape the image of it. That mountain, now so large, is always on the horizon. It’s there every morning I wake, every commute to and from work (passing by the gym in the meantime) and each time I try to accomplish something only to fall short, adding to the height of its peak.
There are many words and terms in The Dictionary that made me reflect like this. It evokes and promotes and incites feelings (and not just sad ones like this). There’s joy and curiosity, and a desire to fill in the gaps, and almost like a natural consequence, it places you in a state of remembrance and introspection.
This book takes a surprisingly long time to read due to all the heartful meanderings and flights of insightful longing it creates. It is not a book for binging, but for pulling at, testing, and indulging one morsel at a time. If it were possible to set this book behind my chest, and let it rest next to my heart—plug it in like a battery, to fuel that temperamental, ridiculous thing—I would jump at the chance. To let it grow into a new organ, right there beside the rest, as something to sustain me.
All of which sounds very dramatic, I know. Welcome to my blog, thanks for being here. I guess it may just be different when you’ve seen the full picture of what The Dictionary has to offer.
But god, I’m starting to sound a bit excessive, and even more insufferable.
Let’s close out with the last type of word offered by The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: a longer, more considered type, that extends its reach beyond the confines of mere academic definition. There are a couple dozen of these hidden in nooks between the rest, and they, more than any of the others, shine the brightest of all its words.
You may support the author by buying the book here. Thanks for reading. (And a piece-appropriate song, which accompanied me throughout my experience with the Dictionary).
Yu Yi
The longing to feel things intensely again
The first note is always the loudest. The conductor snaps their baton, the strings slash their bows, and the symphony thunders to life before settling down into a reverberating hum.
So it is with every new experience. How quickly each feeling starts to fade as you recalibrate your expectations. 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.
But sometimes you reach a point when you can’t feel anything at all, just a ringing in your ears—until like Beethoven, you find yourself pounding the keys of your life, trying to make the ground thunder below your feet. It makes you wish you could look around with fresh eyes, and feel things just as powerfully as you did when you felt them for the first time.
When you were a kid, you could still get excited about things. You felt that pirate’s itch on the last day of school, the morning of your birthday, or the final turn toward your grandparents’ house. You could feel rich from the coins in your pocket or being offered a piece of gum. You remember how big the world used to be, how wandering into the next neighborhood felt like stepping into a foreign country. Adults swept over you like giants. Every rule was a decree, every sentence a life sentence.
Time moved differently then, if it moved at all, arriving in big scholastic chunks, and each arrival felt major. You’d start up the school year like a witness protection program, ready to be assigned new teachers, new skills, a new identity. In the summer, you could make an afternoon last all week long, riding bikes with friends or watching a trickle of water feel its way through the dirt. There were no phones buzzing in your pockets, no schedules, no hormones, no distractions—or maybe it was all distractions. Whatever it was, you tried to keep it going as long as you could, even after the streetlights turned on in the evening and you heard voices in the dark, already calling you home.
The kaleidoscope of your emotions spun wildly throughout the day, all of it intense. You could walk along howling or weeping or grinning like a goon. When you loved someone, you loved them openly and with abandon, squeezing hugs as hard as you could. When you found something funny, you could laugh so hard your diaphragm ached, your cheeks wet with tears, your temples throbbing. You could plunge into a book and come out gasping, stumble out of a movie looking at faces and colors differently, listen to a song on loop for weeks and feel it grab you by the throat every time. And you knew how to play, knew how to make your toys come alive in front of you, how to listen for their weird little voices.
But somehow, even then, a part of you understood that this intensity wasn’t going to last. There were moments late in childhood when you tried going back to play with your old favorite toys again, almost as a guilty pleasure, only to find you couldn’t do it anymore. They looked just the same, as you turned them over in your hands—but suddenly they felt like bits of fabric and molded plastic, with nothing left to say.
You’ll never feel the same sense of peace you once felt, drifting off to sleep in the back seat of a car, only to find yourself teleported back into your own bed. You’ll never have friendships that occupy so much of your attention, spending hours together everyday for months, which made even the slightest betrayal sting. You’ll never feel the mortifying terror of a middle-school bully or the heartrending agony of an unrequited crush. You should only hope that life never punches you in the gut the way it did then.
Still, every once in a while you catch yourself humming along to some silly pop song that once broke your heart at sixteen, trying to tap back into that feeling again. That was once your entire life. It was only a matter of time before the world took notice and turned down the volume.
The music is still in there somewhere, even if you can’t hear the notes. Besides, there’s some beauty left in echoes—in knowing you have a part to play and playing it well, in concert with those around you. And there are those rare moments when you can let yourself go, close your eyes and let your body move with the orchestra, the way that old trees swing back and forth in a windstorm.
You have to wonder what you’re missing, closing your eyes like that. No matter; keep playing. Play as well as you can, and let some other soul get swept away for a moment or two. Until like Beethoven, you look up from the keys and ask yourself, “Ist es nicht schon?”
“Is it not beautiful?”