“Field of Dreams” is an apt container, not only for the sport of baseball, but what it represents, in our daily waking life. The old way… walking along a summer country road, gnats in the air, tawny grasses buzzing. A time of youth and innocence, renewed yearly to feed our memories and connections to the past, and to the recurrent cycles of nature.
The summer game that became the American pastime, now a civilized sport, recalls the physical actions of a hunting culture, million-year arts of survival: uniquely human gifts of skill, strength, and finesse, now doing no harm to fellow creatures.
Today, I walk alone on the edge of the highway, safe on the shoulder facing oncoming traffic. Alert when a hotrodder, as if reading my thoughts and testing my theory of the benevolent speedster, zooms out of the blue to pass the car in my lane headed for town. I survive, more alert than before. A few steps later, a guy on a humble electric scooter glides past, holding up a dozen cars fixed on their destination. In conclusion, some are heedless of harm, others bent on their own path; thus we have modern society.
On many roads on this island, pedestrians rule. Claiming space in the driving lane; crossing streets oblivious to the world around their captivating screen. In early summer the cyclists arrive in droves, pumping relentlessly up Ganges hill, or dallying along Beddis Road, neither thoroughfare blessed with navigable shoulders, let alone dedicated bike lanes. The result, a deadly hazard for all. Yet, here we all are, vying for turf.
Who gets the last at bat? The last play before the clock runs out? The penalty shot that makes it or breaks it?
It’s what we do: getting around, running errands, delivering kids, joyriding… But some choose not to go to town today; not to play bumper cars; not even to turn on the game. “All the marbles” are already here—in the land, the water, the unsprayed air. Some go walking in leafy wonder on a winding creek road, or down a wild beach where the wild geese rest.
Do you remember nature? Do you ever go there? We all recognize that place, memorialized in our photo albums. Backgrounding our computer screens and movie sets, populating our zoos.
Do I ramble? So it is, the walking pace, the human scope. Thoughts, impressions, the world alive, measured in stride. Where we came from, where we are going, and the moment between. How is it for you? If you’ve got a moment.
Away from the screen, that is. In the past, screens were used for camouflage, for the hunter to hide behind, waiting for prey to come within striking distance of the blind. Today they are used to screen us from the gazes of others on city streets; to distract us from our own thoughts; to shield us from the simultaneous predations of our data, our identities, our souls.
Have even our dreams now been hacked, removed from living fields of play and wonder, rendered obsolete and shelved in dusty memory? Have we lost use of our living senses and now rely on apps to define our dreams, muting our voices in fingertip code? What will we have left to say when we awake?
(more: Field of Dreams, part 1)
