John Koenig
from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

karmapol n. The imaginary committee of elders who keep a running log of your mistakes, steadily building their case that you’re secretly a fraud, a coward, a doofus and a douche, and who would have successfully revoked your good fortune years ago had they not been held up during council by bitter squabblings over grammar and spelling.

gnasche n. The intense desire to bite deeply into the forearm of someone you love.

apomakrysmenophobia n. The fear that connections between people are ultimately shallow, that although relationships feel congenial at the time, an audit of your life would reveal low-interest holdings and un-invested windfall profits in your emotional safety deposit box; this will indicate that you were never really at risk of joy, sacrifice or loss.

adomania n. The crushing feeling that the future is arriving ahead of schedule, that all years with fanciful nameslike “Two Thousand Eleven” are bursting from their hypothetical cages into the arena of the present, furiously bucking your grip as you slip, one hand reaching for the reins, the other waving high like a school-kid who knows the answer to the question.

ameneurosis n. The half-forlorn, half-escapist ache of a train whistle calling in the distance at night.

Funkenzwangsvorstellung n. The instinctive trance of a campfire in the dark, spending hours roasting and watching as it settles and sinks into the ground like a heap of shipwrecks whose sailors raise their flickering sails trying to signal that the prevailing winds of your life are about to shift, that the edge of the Earth is real and looming just a few years ahead, and that your marshmallow is on fire.

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 punchline—the name of the beneficiary of all human struggle, the sum of the final payout of every investment ever made in the future—which may not suit your sense of humor anyway.

_ _

Illustrations by Jenna Dee. Additional entries in the Dictionary can be found online at dictionaryofobscuresorrows.com.

<< Back to Issue 15, 2012