Wild goose chasing the right word.

Is there a word for that feeling you have when you finish reading a really good book? So many words exist, and just the one would do here. What is the right word for that?

I hope, before I’ve even attempted to describe this phenomenon, you know what that feeling I’m talking about is. You can feel it edging closer as the right side of the book gets thinner. It’s there—just after the highly climactic unravelling of the story. Everything has fallen apart, or it finally came together. The protagonist probably went through a big event, or had a sudden realization. Either way, a major breakthrough was had, and you experienced it. The ending could have been beautiful, or perfect, or tragic, or happy. Maybe the right word for the ending summons another wild goose chase.

I don’t want to lose focus here: what I’m talking about is that slight twinge of sadness that sets in right after you finish reading a book. I don’t think this happens with films, even a film based on the same book. You’ve invested 2 hours in watching the film; whereas, you really spent a lot of time reading that book. You were invested in the characters and what happened to them. And then suddenly, the book ends. You read the last sentence, and then you sit quietly for a moment.

It starts settling in.

Rationally, you know those places and characters were only fictional. They only exist in ink on a page. But you’ve read the book, and now, they also exist in your mind—they exist inside you. This isn’t a silly point: some badass author has delightfully exploited your human/monkey brain, and you can’t help it. Over the course of that book, there was a profound sense of reality that opened up inside of you. And then, it was over without goodbye. What is the word for that feeling?

It’s a certain kind of sadness. A particular sorrow, relived—the sorrow of leaving. There are words that we use to describe various kinds of sadness. Homesick. Heartbroken. Nostalgic.

Homesick and nostalgic seem close – dwelling in a memory. Thomas Wolfe’s popular phrase “You can’t go home again” seems to capture the complex nature of leaving something behind. You can try to re-experience it, but it won’t be the same. Wolfe might as well have said, “You can’t read the same book again.”

But neither of these words go far enough for me. There is a tangible feeling inside me when I finish reading a good book. My skin tingles. Waves of involuntary energy ripple across me, inside and on the surface of my skin. What’s the word for that?

There is an interesting word called frisson. It literally means a sudden strong feeling, but I think of it as the tingle you feel when you hear good music, or hear words that hit you like poetry. It physically manifests in an involuntary bodily reaction called piloerection, or what we more commonly call goosebumps. Some people call it a skin orgasm.

But even this doesn’t capture the unpleasant aspects of this feeling. Your taste buds pucker. Your eyes puff and glisten. Your heart feels unsettled in your ribcage, like it’s been wrestling with bed sheets that just won't get comfortable. There's no cool side of the pillow with this feeling.

So perhaps there isn’t a word yet that acknowledges this phenomenon. There is a window of time after reading a book in which our physical, emotional, and mental bodies continue to create a visceral space for that book’s universe to continue existing. It should be a comfort to know that people and places, both real and imagined, continue to exist within us as feelings. It should be a comfort to know that we’re capable of such feelings, and perhaps, it’s appropriate to give a word to this feeling so that we can acknowledge the power of our imaginations, and so that we have a word that lets us carry it consciously for longer.

Until then, I'll be out chasing wild geese.

#Reading