October 30, 2024
Rhymes With Ponder / October 30, 2024
I often experience sonder but, prior to a few days ago, I’d never even heard the word. It’s a neologism that represents the profound feeling of realizing that every other individual you see is living a life as vivid, complex, full, and real as your own. Included in the feeling might be realizing that to some of these individuals you might appear only once, as an “extra” sipping coffee in the background, as a face glimpsed while waiting in line, as a figure seen moving through a lighted room at dusk.
I love that there’s a word for this feeling, these realizations!
I often experience sonder when Dave and I travel in the very wee hours of the morning—think 200a—heading to Virginia. We know why we‘re on the road but wonder what the heck others are doing on the road at that hour. At which point, sonder occurs.
Suddenly I dial in to the sharp awareness that the countless cars I see are not just cars but are vehicles in which folks with active, complicated lives of their own are driving meaningfully and purposefully from one place to another, and I am intensely curious about their lives. I entertain the fantasy that I could stop maybe four or five of those cars and conduct in-depth interviews with the occupants, after which I’d share their stories in a book.
Now I know what my book’s theme and possible title would be: SONDER!
In the interim, until I get my book contract, I continue to edit and repurpose art of mine that’s been semi-retired. The piece below was created in 2016 with then 6-year-old granddaughter Emmy. I later sent it as a postcard to my dad. Later still, following his death, the postcards I’d painted for him between my mom’s death in 2015 and his in 2021, all of which he’d saved, came back into my possession.
Today, I delight in this particular card, trimming it down and sprucing it up a bit, retitling it, and sending it out again to someone new.
3.5 x 4.5″; acrylic, pencil, ink, and wax pastel on manila stock
2024 edit of 2016 card
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12 responses to “Rhymes With Ponder”
(I’m just catching up, too, post travel.)
J’adore words and sonder is new for me. I wanted further info on it and found it came from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. Who knew there was such a thing?!
Anyway, it’s beautiful, the way you’re giving your art new life and resending it back out into the ethers. And this one, with your granddaughter’s work, too. I’m drawn to the white fluffy, mushroomy center. Cool!
Roseanne, like you, I wanted further info and discovered that sonder comes from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. I’ve put a hold on the book on my phone—22 weeks! A long time, but I’m savoring the anticipation : )
Thanks for your affirmation of my giving my art new life. I’m grateful for that impulse which has me back in my studio and back at my blog. Thank you, as well, for your comment a short while ago about missing seeing my art—you fanned a little ember enough to coax out a flame!
Love that you’re drawn to the white fluffy, mushroomy center! Love your description as well.
I do have mushrooms on the brain. I just got back from visiting my bro and s-i-l in Maine and he has become an avid mushroom grower. While there, we harvested some lion’s mane mushrooms which look similar to the white fluff in your piece.
“Lion’s mane is a large, white mushroom, that as it grows, has a shaggy appearance that resembles a lion’s mane. Studies have demonstrated that lion’s mane helps increase Nerve Growth Factor (NGF) levels, which protects us against degenerative brain diseases that contribute to memory loss.17 While lion’s mane is best known for improving memory and concentration, studies show it can reduce irritability and anxiety.18,19 Several studies have also indicated that lion’s mane has immune-boosting benefits. Harmful pathogens enter the body through the mouth or nose as we breathe in. Lion’s mane can bolster our defenses by helping to stimulate gut bacteria to trigger the immune system.20,21“
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Thank you for enlightening us with this word! I often experience sonder too. I think it on the road like you…and when we walk in the evenings and see lights on in people’s homes. They all have stories and lives…they’re all going somewhere. Even when I pick up a found object….I try and imagine the people who once held the object too. We are just “extras” in each other’s stories.
My “learn something new” for the day. Thank you, Dotty.
I love that this card has a history. And that it is living a second life, and bringing joy to someone new. (And to you, in the creating.)
Makes me think of those videos (from childhood) where they followed a dollar bill, or a letter, and showed us the journey. A day in the life, I think. This postcard is a wanderer with a story to tell.
Sheila, what fun that this post evokes memories in you—and now in me—of those a-day-in-the-life-of videos! Yes! Thanks for the fun of knowing you share my delight in the history of a piece of art such as this one. For sure my re-engaging brings me joy all over again in the layers of creating.
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I do often have a quick chat with someone at a rest station on the highway, but those conversations are about something in the here and now; maybe I’ll start deeper conversations, start getting more fully realized content for my book!
Or, alternately, and you made me laugh with this idea, I could INVENT the fully realized lives!
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