I love a good dictionary. I’ve a thing for obscure words. And right now, my sorrows abound. The perfect time then to stumble upon the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows.
As I try to get in the 10,000 steps I promised my GP I would do each day, rain, hail, or shine, I pass people in their gardens weeding their vegetable patches or flowerbeds.
Some sit and chat outside the village shop. Others hang out outside the presszó. More again sit on the streetside benches outside their gates.
I always say hello and muster a smile, no matter how miserable I’m feeling.
liberosis
n. the desire to care less about things—to loosen your grip on your life, to stop glancing behind you every few steps, afraid that someone will snatch it from you before you reach the end zone—rather to hold your life loosely and playfully, like a volleyball, keeping it in the air, with only quick fleeting interventions, bouncing freely in the hands of trusted friends, always in play.
Some I know enough to stop and chat to in my pigeon Hungarian. Others I’m on waving terms with. I stop, too, for Roszi and Lizzie, and a couple of other dogs who expect a pet – a doggie toll. They’re all in my world. My world. They pop in and out, hanging about the edges, adding a subtle richness to my day.
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 invisible around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of 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.
fitzcarraldo
n. an image that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain—maybe washed there by a dream, or smuggled inside a book, or planted during a casual conversation—which then grows into a wild and impractical vision that keeps scrambling back and forth in your head like a dog stuck in a car that’s about to arrive home, just itching for a chance to leap headlong into reality.
dead reckoning
n. to find yourself bothered by someone’s death more than you would have expected, as if you assumed they would always be part of the landscape, like a lighthouse you could pass by for years until the night it suddenly goes dark, leaving you with one less landmark to navigate by—still able to find your bearings, but feeling all that much more adrift.
6 responses
Wow. I like words and word concepts. But this is a lot to take on today. Quite a punch. Thank you?
Perhaps just one would have been ample…
No, I think it was balanced and needed the breadth. But it is very unexpectedly powerful. I am studying the dictionary.
Excellent thoughts, sentiments… and words
I never thought of death as an end so much. End of something wonderful here on Earth. We are taught in the Roman Catholic faith that it is a time passing and we go on as we must until we go back to God. Such a limited time on this Earth, to learn and hope to teach others. But as our time passes, and others go before us – it is lonely and we miss those that have been so close around us and such a huge part of our lives here on Earth. -there are no words, not one single one, that can truly express what we are experiencing and living through each day. The moments stop us in our tracks.
At our age now, Dan and myself, we are losing many friends, and it leaves us looking at life differently. Such an accumulation of ‘things’ that will mean nothing to others (I may leave notes!). It has been a good life. We have been so blessed. And although, we’ve no plans to leave this Earth quite yet, we are thankful for all the many memories we have of others and will continue to make more.
to you, Mary and prayers that God may bless you with the Grace needed to carry on each day. We Irish are a strong and sentimental bunch, and our feelings are deep.
trish ✝️
That accumulation of things makes less sense the older I get …