#marni jackson

[walrusmagazine]

Spend the rest of the week scrolling through our annual Summer Reading special, featuring new writing by Randy Boyagoda, Marni Jackson, and Benjamin Hertwig, at thewalrus.ca!

Artwork by Jordan Bennett (jordanbennett.ca).

[chrisnolan-ca]

DON’T I KNOW YOU? By Marni Jackson

Reading the first story in this novel in stories and I can’t get past the factual errors in descriptions of nature.  Cicadas singing while looking at the trillium in flower?  Buzz.  And I’m trying to picture a stone bridge that spans the Grand river and I just don’t see it, unless there are parts of the Grand that are much more narrow than the parts I’ve seen - and normally I’d trust the author on something like this I’m unsure of, but if her earlier facts are so far off, maybe this one is too.  She’s a journalist, so I’d think her fact checking would be better, so maybe she’s attempting some literary freedom dealing with 50 year old memories and how they can get jumbled up when re-telling but... nah, I don’t think I’ll keep reading.

[bookishmarginalia]

Seem appropriate, especially given this election season...

[au-nte]

“People talk about their chronic pain as if ratting on the other partner in an unhappy, toxic marriage. They fall out with their pain, they have screaming fights with it, they make up again. Or they try to run away with some attractive little analgesic. But pain has their cell-phone number and won’t let them escape. Living with chronic pain can be a grinding form of intimacy.”

Marni Jackson, Pain: The 5th Vital Sign

[kryokatsquotes]

Pain: the Fifth Vital Sign, Marni Jackson

"With depression, it's the loss of energy that saves people...I would lie there in bed most days thinking...If I could just get into the bathtub and get the razor--but the thought of getting up and going into the bath was too much. I just couldn't do it. It's a comfort to fantasize though."

[kryokatsquotes]

Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign, Marni Jackson

Faced with someone suffering, unable to help, it's hard not to flinch or feel the urge to run away. No wonder so many doctors are uneasy in the presence of pain. If they can't fix it, they would prefer to fax it somewhere else. We do the same thing with shocking news in the paper, about children bombed to bits in an Israeli pizzeria. There is a deep need to take in the pain of strangers, to turn it into a story--and then to pass it on. We need to pass it on. Nobody wants to be left holding the hot potato of pain.