Aiming for the 'Rock of Hope' When You're Stuck in the 'Reservoir of Go the Hell Home'

Yes. You read the title correctly.

"About 200 yards ahead, to your left, is a huge boulder. That's where you want to be. That's what us folks here at Delacorte theater call the 'Rock of Hope.' But where we are right now, where you guys are on the line -- you're in the 'Reservoir of Go the Hell Home.' "

That's what the cute John Krasinski look-a-like staff member at Delacorte Theatre said to us and to all the others at the back of the line hoping to score free tickets to Shakespeare in the Park's production of "The Merchant of Venice," starring Al Pacino as the moneylending Shylock.

The boulder was nowhere in sight (at least from where we were standing), so we were stuck in the "Reservoir of Go the Hell Home" and had absolutely no chance of getting those tickets. This reminded me so much of last year, when a few friends and I tried to watch "Twelfth Night" with Anne Hathaway cast as Viola of Messaline. The same guy kept telling us that we wouldn't be able to get tickets from that far back in the line (he was right). And yes, just like last year, people camped out in the middle of the wee early morning hours just to see a big-name actor perform in a free play in Central Park.

Mr. Pacino, why'd you have to be so legendary and iconic The Godfather and in Scarface?

Oh, well. The month's not over yet, so at least there might still be a chance.

We (Amy, Liliana, Liliana's sister, and I) decided to leave the line and GTFO. But we decided not to waste the day, so we sat in the grass for a while and just talked, catching up here and there on each other's lives and wishing that we could all study/vacation abroad. We didn't exactly have a Plan B, but thank goodness I always carry the Cool Pass (free admission for up to 5 people to almost any museum in NYC) with me, so we could spend the day trying to be productive.

We walked all the way to Whole Foods from 86th to 60th on the West Side (not as tiring as it sounds, trust me) and ate lunch there. We browsed a couple of stores afterwards. The conversation (thanks to Amy, hehe) kept bouncing back and forth between clothes and food (mostly food). Especially sushi, buffalo wings, and Jamba Juice. Even after we ate our lunch, the cookbooks at Borders just added more to our passion for food and encouraged us to at least try to have a well-balanced and healthy diet. I'm not so sure I could do without my cheese puffs addiction so soon. Baby steps, I guess.

I bought a book, too. Not a cookbook, but a rather funny retelling of 'Sleeping Beauty' that involves some sort of time traveling or dimension jumping or something like that. I have yet to read it, so I can't really say what's going on between the pages. But it sounds refreshing, and I'll try to give it a review later in another post.

We walked back up to 82nd, to the American Museum of Natural History, where we met up with my sister and got in with the Cool Pass. We strolled through the cultural anthropology exhibits. I never get tired of these exhibits -- even though I've been to that museum way too many times to count, there's always a new angle that comes along with thinking critically about the artifacts on display, especially when you think about perspective. For instance, why do the descriptions for some of the Plains Indian costumes in the Plains Indians exhibit sound like an ignorant and racist historian wrote them? A Wikipedia entry could probably have more substance and objectivity (har, har). 

Although, some of the exhibits (and the descriptions of artifacts within them) weren't that bad.

Still, it always makes you think twice about whether to take something at face value or continue to question it. Critical thinking is a craft that must always continue to be honed. Our brains are muscles, too.

Anyway, the guy at the park was right. He was trying to be funny, but I thought he came up with a pretty neat metaphor. You could apply it to anything, really -- if you're looking for a new job or internship, if you're trying to overcome your fear of bungee jumping, if you're in the process of writing a book, or if you're trying to analyze something and think outside the box.

So don't settle for the Reservoir of Go the Hell Home. Go out and do something that will bring you closer to that Rock of Hope.

It sounds kind of corny, but it could pass off as a decent mantra, couldn't it?