Sometimes I mourn the loss of loved ones I haven't actually lost. I'll be lying on the sofa, for instance, and my dog Lucy will be asleep on my chest, and I'll get to thinking about how this 11-lb. creature, who brings an amount of joy into the world incommensurate with her size--which, after all, isn't much larger than the business end of a feather duster--will someday be gone, never to pass this way again, and it just breaks my ever-loving heart.
This is perhaps a symptom of an elegiac or morbid temperament or, more likely, a symptom of not having any real problems and therefore having to imagine some. I have a vague memory of reading a passage in Proust where the narrator describes a similar presentiment of bereavement regarding his grandmother or maybe Albertine, but I can't find it.
ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Buzz22 Chicago's Quake and Residue are in this week's Chicago Reader.
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