There is so much sadness in the city (of Beirut) right now, sadness is what we breathe. 1/n

And we don't know what to do with it, it has no direction, no horizon, we don't know how to relate to it and where it fits, if it fits all, in how we relate to others. 2/n

The usual sadness, the sadness of before, we could always (had to) relate to it as our own — it's not just sadness, it's my sadness, I can decide or desire to share it, I can decide that it can't be shared... 3/n

but at least because I cannot assume that it is shared, it grounds by default a sense of self, it is a differential that makes for the possibility of relationship and communication (including in the form of the refusal to communicate)... 4/n

This sadness, now, is not like that — it's hardly our own, it's always already everybody's sadness, and we don't know what to do with it. (And modern bourgeois psychology — "talk!" — is absolutely useless in front of it.) 5/n

(Which of course is not deny that there are huge differences in the pain that is felt, or that forms of privilege protect some from some (a lot) of this pain, but my point is not about pain, it's about sadness.) 6/6