Fatigued

Some dog walkers up in Dahr el-Baidar

“Aren’t you off today?” asks the old aunt in my house as I was about to leave last week.

What? Is it Sunday? I could have sworn it was Monday, I am thinking.

“No, there is a strike. Everything is closed.”

6:37 AM in the mountains

How I got to be from a journalist who was subscribed to just about every news service in town to a person who hasn’t watched the news in over two weeks is slightly befuddling. But there it is. I seriously haven’t read a newspaper or watched the news in over two weeks. What I pick up from the news is when Facebook friends start sharing ‘I am safe’ messages.

I have an employer who does not believe in strikes, and so off to work I was. I don’t even know what the strike was for. I am politically fatigued.

Pine trees

Back in journalism school I was taught that every society and civilization goes through cycles, and that it is not realistic to assume that once a society is on a high,  it will remain like that. What goes up, must come down, according to my professor. Change is inevitable and continuous. And not always for the better. There were some philosophers he quoted, by I missed that bit of information. It is not the politicians that cause the mood of society, but they represent the mood of the people. From what we’ve got in power these days around the globe, I’d say I am not alone in this politically fatigued-mood.

A view from something very old to something rather new

I used to scour blogs for one political analysis after the other. Bloggers would dissect the comments of politicians, put them in a different light and provide background info that newspapers wouldn’t bother with. But the blog sphere in Lebanon these days is taken over by fashionistas, movie critics, restaurant reviewers and those that are plugging products for freebees. There is one blogger that still actively promotes road trips through Lebanon, but that’s about it.

Everyone is politically fatigued.

An abandoned house

Everybody I know is busy with surviving. Even the streets are tired. My street used to be nice and clean, but the Sokleen guys no longer sweep every morning. The influx of people into the neighborhood has led to more garbage, but it does not get cleaned up anymore. At night, there are people that spend time in the tiny space that used to be a little park, but no longer, and now the park is slowly filling itself with carton boxed they use to sit on, beer bottles and cigarette packs, and the hoses of the irrigation system got disconnected, and now the plants are dying.

The whole town is fatigued.

 

There is art in everything

It is all cyclical, and I am sure there will be an uplift, and it seems that currently we are riding the bottom of the wheel.

But it is all good, because I spent a lot of time outside Beirut. I count my newborn turtles (I am at 20 right now and another 2 hatching), I go on long walks through the mountains with the dogs, I enjoy the views, see friends now and then, and that’s about it.

And this too, shall pass.