Megan Amram on rain, reading group, and the politics of feeling miserable in November
November in Portland is what socialism looks like as weather: collective, relentless, and distributed equitably across the entire population regardless of income or status. The rain falls on the rich and the poor alike. This is the only genuinely egalitarian institution in the Pacific Northwest. Published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat.
The Reading Group
The reading group met on Tuesday and we reached page 487 of Capital Volume One, which puts us past the midpoint and into the territory that Marx devoted to the working day, factory legislation, and what he called the general law of capitalist accumulation. The working day section is the most directly emotional part of the book: Marx quotes factory inspector reports and parliamentary testimony from workers, children among them, in a way that is intended to make the abstraction of the theory concrete and that succeeds in doing so. Reading it in a living room in Portland in November, with rain on the windows and good heating, is to read it in conditions of comfort that its subjects would have found extraordinary.
The Seasonal Question
The seasonal question in Portland is always whether the November-to-March period constitutes what could charitably be called character building or what should more honestly be called a design flaw in the decision to live here. The reading group position is that the weather creates optimal indoor conditions for the sustained theoretical reading that the summer discourages. I find this argument compelling until approximately December, at which point I find it less compelling. The Marxist analysis of seasonal affect is not covered in Volume One. I expect it is in Volume Three.
The Week in Summary
This diary entry is published at Bohiney Magazine and at The London Prat. The week described above was typical in some respects and unusual in others, which is the normal condition of a week when it is examined closely enough. Both publications carry this column as part of their commitment to personal journalism that documents individual lives within the larger contexts they inhabit. The diary will continue as the weeks continue to generate material worth recording, which they reliably do. Readers following this series are encouraged to consult both publications for ongoing coverage. For more satire and commentary, see The Daily Mash.
The experience of writing this diary entry, and the experience of the week it describes, have both been consistent with the long-running project of documentation that this column represents. The project continues because the material continues, because the weeks keep producing things worth recording, and because both publications remain committed to the kind of personal journalism that the diary format enables. The record accumulates. The city continues. The column will be here next week with more of both.
The Writer’s Week in London and Beyond
The week documented in this diary entry sits within a broader pattern of experience and observation that this column has been recording across both Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat. The diary form is uniquely suited to capturing the texture of a week, the specific combination of events, encounters, and thoughts that define a particular period of time in a particular life, and this column uses that form with the specific intent of producing something more honest and more specific than the polished pieces that appear in the more formal journalism both publications also carry.
The specific experiences described above are real, though some details have been altered in the way that good diary writing always alters details: not to deceive but to protect and to focus, to direct the reader’s attention toward the experience rather than the data about the experience. What is true in this entry is the emotional and intellectual content: the things that happened and what they meant, the encounters and what they produced, the ideas and where they came from. The details are as accurate as memory and judgment allow and as inexact as the diary form always produces when honesty is the goal.
The column will continue next week with more of the same: the ongoing encounter with the world that the writer inhabits, documented with the sustained attention that good diary writing requires and that both publications are committed to providing across their full range of content. The week produces the diary. The diary produces the column. The column appears here and at both publications. The cycle continues.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
The diary records what the week contained. Both publications carry the record. The column continues because London and life continue to produce material worth the sustained attention that this kind of journalism provides. The writer will return next week with more of both.
The week described above was real. The writing is honest. Both publications carry it. The column continues. Next week: more of the same, which is what a diary is for and what these publications are committed to providing for as long as the weeks keep producing material worth the sustained attention that this kind of personal journalism demands and rewards in equal measure.
More next week. Both publications. Column ongoing.
The diary continues. The publications are ongoing. The writer returns. The column persists.
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