created 2025-03-03, & modified, =this.modified
tags:y2025
rel:An Attempt At Exhausting a Place In Paris by Georges Perec
Walking to and from the lighthouse, I would pass people. My pace allowed me only bits of their conversation, and the boardwalk constrained our distances at points. I’d hear their voice, for a moment, as if I were part of the conversation, and then it was gone on the wind.
I thought she was your go to…
yes, I’d never…
In the city you’ll see this, but it’s so heavily saturated with voices our drowned out with vehicle traffic. Noise.
When I had reached the lighthouse, my destination was to climb to the top. I intended to climb it and look out. I had an illustration in an old book I own, and I wanted to match the perspective of the artist.
I braced myself to restore my breath at the top, anticipating conversation.
At the top was an older man who I spoke to. I thought of his day, right under the rotating light and mostly silent besides the occasional visiting group. He offered me a photo and I declined, instead asking him to point of features of landscape and asking stories (that which looks like driftwood is a dried whale’s skull, this is the direction of the sunken forest).
When I looked over the land, I saw people on the boardwalk, and the various paths toward the water that I had just walked. On the way in my activity was so individualized. I was in my own world.
I saw the delineation of the biomes, like the different ocean plants which had dominated portions.
But what I commented on to the man was that from afar, I could see that the path and view were actually quite busy, just everyone was separated on their own paths. It was the first time all day I had seen dozens of people at once.
For all below, the sightlines didn’t afford them seeing much besides what was in front of them, and the Lighthouse itself which was always in view.
I thanked the man at the top of the tower, and began to descend and return to my car, following the boardwalk.
When I returned back I wondered if the old man at the top of the tower had stepped out to find me, a solitary spec on the landscape.
