All past words.

The realization that each passerby has a life as vivid as your own.

The profound realization that each passerby has a life as vivid as one's own.

Of or relating to shadow; existing in the region of deepest shade.

Strongly evocative of something through scent or association.

Glowing with a soft, clear light; luminous and translucent.

A universal medicine, often associated with alchemy.

The warmth of the sun felt on the skin in the cold of winter.

A Welsh word for homesickness tinged with grief for something irretrievably lost.

A hissing or lisping quality of sound, especially in speech or verse.

The strange wistfulness of used bookshops, haunted by unread lives.

Fleeting, passing quickly, hard to hold. The quality of what refuses to stay.

The quality of being beyond words. The condition of experiences that resist description.

Eternal and unchanging. Lasting forever, across all time.

To make oneself inconspicuous; to gradually erase or wear away. To subtract oneself from the frame.

Having a loud reverberating sound. Also: having an expressive and plaintive quality.

Showing many small points of shifting colour against a light background. Iridescent like an opal.

Things desired or needed. Objectives earnestly sought after.

To study or write intensively, especially at night. The dedicated labor of the lamp.

Very weak or slight. Existing barely, in need of careful handling to persist.

The state of being forgotten or of forgetting. The erasure of memory, voluntary or not.

An involuntary state of obsessive romantic attraction, characterized by an overwhelming need for reciprocation.

Of, resembling, or relating to twilight. Active or appearing at dusk or dawn.

Recollection, especially of a supposed previous existence. The deep memory that precedes experience.

Showing a casual lack of concern. Breezy, untroubled, elegantly indifferent.

A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement. The boredom that goes philosophical.

Producing a deep, clear sound. Also: having the quality of evoking or suggesting images and ideas.

Strange or mysterious in an unsettling way. Familiar and yet not, the discomfort of the almost-known.

The process of releasing strong or repressed emotions, especially through art. Purification through feeling.

The concentration of mental energy on a particular person, idea, or object. The investment of meaning.

Clear and transparent. Of prose or thought: perfectly lucid and unobstructed.

Pleasure derived from another person's misfortune. The feeling you feel but rarely admit.

To think deeply and at length about something. To chew it over, repeatedly, until it yields.

Material that settles to the bottom over time. Metaphorically: the accumulated layers of experience or meaning.

Resembling but not identical to liminal: voluntary, individualistic, optional threshold states typical of modern leisure.

Softly bright or radiant. Light that plays lightly over a surface without harshness.

To depict or describe in painting or words. To portray with particular clarity or beauty.

Physical or mental weariness; lack of energy. The tiredness that goes deeper than sleep can fix.

Showing a milky iridescence. The quality of light that shifts between colours without fully committing to any.

Of extraordinary beauty or delicacy. Also: intensely felt, as in exquisite pain or exquisite pleasure.

Quickly fading and disappearing. What barely arrives before it begins to leave.

To be a sign or warning of something, especially something momentous or unpleasant.

The alignment of three or more celestial bodies. By extension, any remarkable coincidence or alignment.

Speaking fluently and at length. The person who fills a room with language.

Making or characterized by a hissing sound. Soft and sustained, like the letter s.

The quality of the threshold state: ambiguous, transitional, charged with potential.

Sharpness of perception or thought. The mind or eye at its clearest.

A small gap or break in continuity. The space between one thing and another.

Of, relating to, or characteristic of woods or forests. Pleasantly rural or woodland.

Too great or extreme to be expressed in words; beyond the capacity of language to contain.

Having a strong spiritual or mysterious quality; filled with a sense of the presence of divinity.

The interplay of light and shadow in visual art. By extension, a mixture of contrasting qualities or conditions.

Below the threshold of conscious perception. Operating at a level the mind doesn't register but the body or feeling may.

Open to more than one interpretation. Ambiguous in a way that may be intentional.

Mental calmness and composure, especially in difficult situations. The steadiness that doesn't require things to be easy.

A blue-green colour of particular depth and richness. The green that holds the sea and the forest at once.

Fragile and easily broken. What is precious precisely because it cannot be guaranteed to last.

A manuscript rewritten over an incompletely erased text. By extension, anything that bears visible traces of its earlier states.

Belonging to the half-light. What lives in the interval between states.

A very faint wish or inclination that never becomes strong enough to prompt action. The desire that stops at wanting.

The distinctive earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry ground. The smell the earth releases when it drinks.

The view that only one's own mind is certain to exist. Loosely: extreme self-absorption to the exclusion of others.

Not known by many people; obscure and abstruse. The knowledge that lives in corners.

To reduce in strength, thickness, or value. To gradually weaken.

Sweet or musical; pleasant to hear. The quality of a voice or sound that flows like honey.

The omission of words from speech or writing, leaving meaning to be inferred. What is left out.

The occurrence of events by chance in a happy and beneficial way. Luck that you could not have planned for.

To make the familiar strange, to restore the quality of fresh perception to something habitually overlooked.

Not fully formed or developed. Still in its early stages, lacking order or final shape.

A dissociative state involving loss of identity, often with flight from familiar surroundings. Also: a contrapuntal musical form.

The point in a planet's orbit farthest from the sun. By extension, a moment of greatest distance or coldness.

Pensive, deeply thoughtful, with a quality of melancholy contemplation.

Having a feeling of vague longing or regret. A gentle sadness over what cannot be recovered.

An omen or sign of things to come. The practice of divining from signs.

The inherent nature or essence of something. What makes a thing the specific thing it is.

An uncertain period of awaiting a decision or resolution. An in-between state that neither proceeds nor ends.

Lasting for a very short time; here only briefly before vanishing.

A soft murmuring or rustling sound; a whisper that is more felt than heard.

Of or during the day. Relating to the daily cycle, active in daylight.

Dark, obscure, and brooding. The quality of shadow that carries weight.

Tending to talk a great deal. Verbose but often interestingly so.

Serving no practical purpose. Idle, superfluous, doing nothing useful.

Traveling from place to place; nomadic. Originally applied to Aristotle's school, which taught while walking.

Unbreakable; impenetrably hard. What cannot be bent or destroyed.

The partially shadowed region around an area of complete shadow. By extension, a marginal or uncertain area.

A period when normal government is suspended; a gap between two reigns or regimes. An interval of uncertainty.

A sudden and striking realization. A moment when something long obscured becomes clear.

A gentle quality of warmth and care. The soft impulse toward what is fragile or beloved.

Optimistic, especially in a difficult situation. The disposition that inclines toward the best possible outcome.

Using very few words. The economy that conveys more by saying less.

Reserved, saying little. The person who speaks when they have something worth saying.

Occupying a position at or on both sides of a threshold. The quality of existing in transition, between what was and what is not yet.

Last but one. The position just before the final.

Showing luminous colors that seem to change when seen from different angles. A shimmer that won't stay fixed.

The state of being dull or lethargic. A mental bluntness that resists sharpening.

Dark, shadowy, and obscure. Suggesting mystery through the absence of light.

A state of serene calmness and freedom from anxiety. The philosophical ideal of tranquility.

A gap or missing portion in something: a text, an argument, a memory. The hole that changes the whole.

Very light, thin, and insubstantial. As fine as spider silk in the morning light.

Light, delicate, and translucent. Barely there.

Twilight, the period between daylight and darkness. The hour when things lose their edges.

Construction or creation using whatever comes to hand. Making do with available materials in an inventive way.

Glowing intensely with light or heat. Also: brilliant or passionate in a way that shines.

To spread throughout and penetrate every part of something. To be present in a diffuse but total way.

Unable to be erased or forgotten. The mark that does not wear away.