A Cockpit in the City

Abstract

Wherever I’m living, I always push my desk and chair up to the window.Being incapable of any great interest in the interior layout, I turn, as soon as I’m able, to the gaping void, the transparency of the outside.If I could, I’d install a bow window, a windscreen suspended above the Square de Châtillon, on the fifth floor—an altitude conducive to travel, to long- haul theoretical journeys.Similarly, as soon as I go away or take time off, my destination is the sea. Or, rather, the coast. As the unavoidable interface between hydrosphere and atmosphere, the seashore seems a necessary part of a transparency I find infinitely satisfying.Against the blue and white sky of Paris, in which the Orly planes trace out their vapor trails, right in front of the window, I inscribe on the white sheet of paper the trajectory of a journey that has no journeying to it.Nothing behind, everything in front; but a dizzying, inaccessible “in front,” where ideas move around with ease. Airlines of the imagination whose routes intersect like those of the airliners flying off toward Italy or Spain, which I gaze on but never wish to board.There’s no building opposite, nothing on the other side of the street. The nearest facade is more than a hundred meters away across the sunken petite ceinture track, a forgotten strategic railway line that once served the capital’s fortifications but where trains no longer run.Even farther out, beyond the crest line of the buildings, lies the boulevard des Maréchaux, a reminder of the regimental artillery. And, farther yet, the boulevard Périphérique, the orbital motorway encircling Paris. Farther, ever farther lie Lyon, Marseille, the Mediterranean, Africa and its deserts . . . Moving, by some rapid imaginary circumnavigation, to the ultimate extreme, I would see my own back!But what do all these expanses matter in the end, since I no longer travel, since everything is already here, has already been seen?On my table, white take- off surface that it is, my ink- fueled vehicle carries me far beyond exoticism, my desires for change of place or scenery being confined to new ideas, to theoretical breakthroughs, to the unexpected.—PVText and photograph of Paul Virilio courtesy of Sophie Virilio.