Blaise Cendrars

In 1924, the Swiss author and adventurer Blaise Cendrars boarded an ocean liner bound for Brazil. An early exponent of Modernism, Cendrars wrote his poems as postcards, telegrams or fleeting blog posts (one is tempted to anachronistically add). When I came across Feuilles de route among the library shelves, it spoke to me immediately, perhaps because of the ship taking him to Rio and then São Paulo, but mostly because of my own enduring fascination with movement.

Speaking of journeys, the kids and I spent the better part of the afternoon watching Project Hail Mary. After years of very different people recommending the book to me, I was at least happy to finally watch the film, which, as Isaiah Menning recently pointed out in Breakthrough Journal, carries a message of technological optimism, humility, and love quite distinct from the misanthropy that still shapes much of contemporary environmental discourse.

With the kids calling it an early night, I got a moment alone on the balcony with a glass of Piedmont red. Instead of giving the wooden deck a proper deep clean, this will all be abandoned in a month from now as we are ending our lease and the house is coming up for sale, probably for 15 million SEK or some equally absurd sum. While the rent has been steep, the value of having this calm garden with all the forest trails and swimmable lakes just around the corner has been priceless. Maybe that is why Cendrars resonates tonight, places matter even when they are only temporary stops along the route.