I don’t miss anyone, and it isn’t coldness or indifference: it’s simply how I connect with people. Out of sight, people leave my thoughts without ever leaving my heart, and the bond picks up intact the moment we meet again, as if no time had passed. I know my silence can hurt those who love differently, but a relationship you force eventually suffocates. In praise of an attachment that asks for nothing.
On July 31, 2026, as an extension of a trip through Lorraine, I drove up to Manderen-Ritzing to visit the Château de Malbrouck, a fifteenth-century fortress planted on its rocky spur in the heart of the Three Borders country. I came for the stone, the wall-walks, and the oak framing, with no idea that the castle was hosting an exhibition devoted to Georges Méliès this season, mounted with the Cinémathèque française. A fine surprise for anyone with a long-standing interest in the pioneer of the trick shot: magic lanterns, phenakistiscope discs, hand-cranked cameras, and the plans of the Montreuil glass studio tell the story of a moving image built first from mechanics and stubborn tinkering. A visit recounted, a reflection on what Méliès still has to say about illusion in the age of generated images, and a good place to eat a short walk from the site.
After the U4 blast furnace at Uckange, one hour of driving to the northeast takes you from industrial wasteland to forest canopy. At Orscholz, the Saarschleife treetop walk unrolls 1,250 meters of timber walkway through beech, oak, and Douglas fir, up to a 42-meter tower overlooking the most spectacular river bend in Germany. Not a single step from the parking lot to the top, a maximum grade of 6 percent, and a privately run structure maintained without a euro from local taxpayers. A visit, a note on the photography, Siegfried Line remnants a few hundred meters away, and everything you need to plan your own trip.
A few days ago, I woke up firmly resolved to go do a little shopping. Those who know me will appreciate the scale of the sacrifice: wandering strip malls under fluorescent lights appears nowhere on my list of earthly pleasures. But sometimes you have to force yourself, if only to replace a pair of shoes […]
There are passions that don’t merely occupy the mind: they colonize it. Mine has a name (the automobile) and a scent: burned fuel mingled with hot rubber. I wanted to capture what really happens when a man, a machine, and a road cease to be three separate things. A tribute to the internal combustion engine, to the precise gesture, and to the brief communion that no algorithm will ever be able to delegate. And, in the final line, a confession I couldn’t keep to myself.
As 2025 draws to a close in a world teetering under its own contradictions, I send you my most heartfelt wishes. This year reminded us, often brutally, that grand speeches are worthless without action, and that it is ordinary people (farmers, artisans, caregivers) who keep this country standing, in the shadows and without fanfare. Beyond the consumer spectacle, Christmas remains that moment when what truly matters reclaims its rights: family, friendship, those foundations no passing ideology can ever replace. I wish you a Christmas full of human warmth and genuine moments, along with the courage to stay true to your convictions in 2026, because hope is not naivety but a form of resistance.