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The Blog of Nathan St. Pierre

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Life Through an Aperture Sunday, June 20, 2010

Perhaps the title of this post is not quite as descriptive or logical as I would hope, but I'm realizing now that every stage of life requires you to view the world through a specific set of limitations. When you're a little kid, you see world through the back seat. I have memories of landscapes and entire worlds through the limited lens of the back seat of a sedan. You don't have the freedom to go wherever you want without the aid of others, and as such you're often tucked into the safety of the back seat. As a college student at the college of music, everything I saw and noticed was filtered through the scope of a composer. The birds chirping were specific discrete sets of pitches and I could hear the conversation between them more as an exchange of ideas that evolved than communicated concrete ideas. I analyzed the form and shape of people as they walked by. Now, I work a full-time job as a software developer. I spend eight hours a day in a cubicle in front of a computer, so mostly, my life is seen through the very strict schedule that I have set. From seven to five, everything is seen as dialogs and prompts and shells on the inside of the office. Outside the office, everything is seen through slatted blinds. The rest of my world is seen through the back window of my house, or through the windows of my car between the two places. As such, I think I defined myself for the longest time by these set of parameters. Today, for better or worse, I'm going to walk outside and see the world on the other side of the window. Maybe I'll find myself being more than a camera defined by the aperture of my circumstances.