NaPoWriMo would like us, on this 17th day of April, "to find, either on your shelves or online, a specialized dictionary. This could be, for example, a dictionary of nautical terms, or woodworking terms, or geology terms. Anything, really, so long as it’s not a standard dictionary! Now write a poem that incorporates at least ten words from your specialized source."
No dictionary on the shelves around here (except my Spanish/English one), so off I went to Wifi-World to see what I could find there. I thought about woodworking terms, but as I'm married to a woodturner I've already mined a few of those. I thought about words relating to music, but again was not inspired. Nothing grabbed me until I discovered a blog called The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, an absolutely delightful collection of neologisms written by one John Koenig who realized there are many emotions and situations that have no specific words in the English language and decided to do something about it. A truncated list of his definitions of the words I used in my poem are below. Next time you have a few minutes you don't know what to do with, check this guy's blog out. Great fun!
Exulansis
There we were,
standing at the edge of our lives looking in again,
a keyframe if
ever there was one, klexos swirling around us
in imperceptible
loops and I’d have brought it up with the MC
had I not been loath to invite anecdoche into the room.
had I not been loath to invite anecdoche into the room.
Your semaphorism
effectively pointed out my occhiolism
but we’ve been
friends too long to let that to get in our way.
Instead, we note
with altschmerz
the silience of newly hatched photographers
who have yet to
succumb to vemödalen
although both of us know they will
for zenosyne has a
way of avoiding the young and catching the old.
We could present
a keta to the rest of the group,
but my pâro suggests
this would likely lead us to a fitzcarraldo,
a trumspringa
that can only end with one or other of us
lodged deep in
daguerreologue.
exulansis: the tendency to give up trying to talk about
an experience because people are unable
to
relate to it, which allows it to drift away until the memory feels out of place
keyframe: a moment that seemed innocuous at the
time but ended up marking a diversion into a strange
new era of your life
klexos: the art of
dwelling on the past
anecdoche: a
conversation in which everyone is talking but nobody is listening
semaphorism: a
conversational hint that you have something personal to say on the subject
but
don’t go any further
occhiolism: the awareness of the smallness of your
perspective
altschmerz: weariness with the same old issues you’ve
always had
silence: the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries
on around you every day, unremarkably
vemödalen: the frustration of photographing something amazing
when thousands of identical photos
already exist
zenosyne: the sense that time keeps going faster
kept: an image that inexplicably leaps back into your mind
from the distant past
pro: the feeling that no matter what you do is always somehow
wrong
fitzcarraldo: an image
that somehow becomes lodged deep in your brain… which then grows into a wild
and
impractical vision
impractical vision
trumspringa: the temptation to step off your career track and
become a shepherd in the mountains
daguerreologue: an imaginary interview with an old photo
of yourself
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