Hindsight

When I was attending middle school I lived in a suburb, spending my free weekends with friends who had computers or a console laying around. Eric had an old computer running Windows 3.1 and a bunch of DOS games, including a version of Flight Simulator. It looked like this:

That’s how I remember it. Nothing over 256 colors and barren, empty “landscapes”. Still, the sense of flight was there. And it was breathtaking. It was fun to change the settings: fly at night and glide around for an hour or two. I made no serious attempts to fly from one airport to another: I just took off from O’Hare International Airport (the simulator’s default, starting airport) and flew. An occasional tilt here and there, just for effect.

I received Microsoft Flight Simulator 2004: A Century of Flight as a gift on Thursday. I took a screenshot this evening while, again, flying aimlessly in my learjet:

Ahh, how the view has changed.

Several weeks ago I casually browsed the new release of DVDs at a local Target. I should have expected some n-th edition of “Field of Dreams” to be released. This time, it was a two-disc “Anniversary Edition”. I bought it, of course.

When I was in junior high school I remember catching “Field…” on network television. I was drawn in for some reason and I thought the story was fascinating. Soon after I bought a VHS copy - at the time, DVD wasn’t a consumer format.

I also ended up getting the DVD when it was finally released on the format.

This Sunday evening, after an overtime shift, I decided to let the remastered edition run while I was computing. I found myself glancing over for long periods of time.

Field of Dreams is one of my favorite films. This latest release of the film is vivid and crisp.

Ray Kinsella is in his mid-thirties and hasn’t done “one spontaneous thing in [his] life”. So he does the unthinkable: he destroys a portion of his corn field to build a baseball field. Unexplainable things occur and he finds himself travelling to Massachusetts and Minnesota to find others who have had similar passions.

This film has always arrested me for its theme: the pursuit of one’s dreams… Dreams and the things people do to find out more about themselves and their hopes.