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SONDER MAGAZINE

SONDER MAGAZINE 001 | 2022 | MADE IN ITALY

Images (photographed on disposable Kodak) and text care by Battaiola Vittoria

INDEX

8 2

You are the main character

The Extras

Sonder is something you feel

Any location is a witness to sonder

Unaware of the lives of others

Sonder: the definition

YOU ARE THE MAIN CHARACTER.

The protagonist. The star at the center of your unfolding story. You’re surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years. While you’re young you don’t realize it, but then again, how could you? Growing up you’re surrounded by people who only look at you, only talk to you, only care about you. The idea that out there, just around the corner, just beyond your eyes, there might be other lives just as real and vivid as yours, doesn’t even cross your mind. And then, one day, you realize it. As sudden and impactful as a punch in the face. You discover you are not the only one; you are one in billions.

The extras make you open your eyes. The extras make you realize. 4

Out there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness. When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories that you’ll never be able to see. That you’ll never know exists. In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk.

OPEN YOUR EYES, YOU ARE THE EXTRAS.

YOU DON’T EVEN APPEAR

This feeling is called sonder. Not nostalgia, not confusion or anxiety, not sadness. Just sonder. And exactly like joy, love and pain, when you experience it for the first time and feel it vibrating on your skin, you never forget it. Whether you’re alone, or surrounded by a crowd of people.

IN MOST OF THE STORIES

You can’t tell if it’s pleasant or not; some people simply understand that they are tiny, that they are part of something extremely big that they can’t control and whose weight doesn’t fall on their shoulders, and they feel relieved. But others, however, may feel a sense of emptiness, of insignificance, when faced with this enormity. Besides, realizing that not only are you not the main character, but you don’t even appear in most of the stories, is a blow to anyone.

Trento (TN), swab location 21.12.2021 9:30 A.M.

Trento (TN), swab location 21.12.2021 15:30 P.M.

Any location is a witness to sonder On the road you travel on your way to work, millions of other people have passed by. Those streets have seen people kissing at the door, papers falling on the ground; they have heard children laughing and old people telling life stories; millions of feet, in millions of different shoes, have shaken the ground even for a few seconds, only to disappear around a corner, chasing their own routine.

YOU REALLY

Name: Zhen xi Age: 14 Dream: becoming a mangaka Fear: being judged

Name: Laura Age: 48 Dream: being there for my kids Fear: another lockdown

Name: Alex Age: 16 Dream: being accepted Fear: not recovering from my illness

Name: Vittoria Age: 19 Dream: finding a true purpose Fear: living with hypochondria

Name: ? Age: ? “All I’m saying is that I’m miserable and I hope I die soon.”

Name: Alessandro Age: 24 Dream: going into space Fear: wasting my time

CANNOT SEE? 11

UNKNOWN TO EVERYONE AND UNAWARE OF THE LIVES OF OTHERS 12

I, Vittoria, am a piece of the puzzle. One in hundreds, thousands, billions. My dreams, my thoughts and my fears, though they have always seemed to be at the center of everything, are something tiny, insignificant. They are all and nothing at the same time. Because around me, of people exactly like me there are so many, a number I can’t even count. And that I will certainly never see, not even for a second, passing by. And you, don’t you feel incredibly powerless?

The word “Sonder” is the invention of John Koenig, creator of The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. “Each original definition aims to fill a hole in the language — to give a name to emotions we all might experience but don’t yet have a word for. All words in this dictionary are new. They were not necessarily intended to be used in conversation, but to exist for their own sake; to give a semblance of order to a dark continent, so you can settle it yourself on your own terms, without feeling too lost — safe in the knowledge that we’re all lost.”