“I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can.” — Jack Gilbert

{ words forgotten and words yet to be invented or written, that explain feelings we can never touch and never understand } -- Started 7th August/13

a dictionary of obscure sorrows

• vellichor

n. the strange wistfulness of used bookstores, which are somehow infused with the passage of time—filled with thousands of old books you’ll never have time to read, each of which is itself locked in its own era, bound and dated and papered over like an old room the author abandoned years ago, a hidden annex littered with thoughts left just as they were on the day they were captured

• ambedo

n. a kind of melacholic trance in which you become completely absorbed in vivid sensory details—raindrops skittering down a window, tall trees leaning in the wind, clouds of cream swirling in your coffee—which leads to a dawning awareness of the haunting fragility of life.

• sonder

n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own—populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness—an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

• snuffle

v. to sniffle and snuggle at the same time (or to snuggle while having a secret little sniff of the other person) aka. " jin stop snuffling me! that is creepy dude! " , OR, " LILY LET'S SNUFFLE TOGETHER " *breaks out in sniffles and snuggles*

• kooky

adj. even quirkier than quirky, aka. " jin you're such a kook " OR " lily stop kookin' around, we're in public! "

• knob

n. a hybrid (love child) between a door knob and a noob. (we don't want to know what sex was like)

• poopy

adj. something that TOTALLY sucks, e.g. " man, lily, everything's so poopy " OR " jin i feel poopy "