We walk through life sometimes ignorant of the way time moves around us. Unless you think, "Soon this moment will be gone," we are mostly present-oriented. But occasionally we do think that the moment we're in, this moment right now, will pass. It will fade into the past among childhood memories and what we ate for breakfast. Soon, this will become a memory.
Video via YouTube
'Dés vu' is what John Koenig calls this awareness. The awareness that time is slipping past us. Koenig is a freelance graphic designer and filmmaker who decided that our language has too many lexical gaps. There is no word in English to describe the hushed feeling of twilight or the strange and exciting presentiment upon meeting someone that you will fall in love. Have you ever wished to care less about things, but never had a word to describe the feeling? Koenig calls it liberosis. By taking different suffixes, roots, and prefixes from a variety of other languages as well as English, he builds new words that can describe the wistfulness of a used bookstore (vellichor) or the realization that someone you've known for years still has a private life that you've never known (gnossienne). This collection of words is called "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows."
"The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows" started out as a blog project on Tumblr, but has recently expanded into the YouTube scene by correlating mini-films with the words in the dictionary. Some of you might know parts of his video "Sonder," as it was mentioned in one of Vsauce's videos, one of the more popular science YouTubers. The mini-films are shot beautifully with a great score to tie in the already poetic definitions. I recommend stopping by both the Tumblr and YouTube channel, and immersing yourself in the comfort of having a word for realizing that even this will become a memory.
