The Waiting Place

A few days ago, I went to the Marina Mall desperately looking for a nice movie to watch. Surprisingly enough, I found one: Fracture, with Anthony Hopkins and Ryan Gosling. The plot is stunning by its simplicity and Anthony Hopkins is, as usual, a cinema monster majestically playing a brilliant and bitter Anthony Hopkins' role. A great movie, like you don't often have the chance to watch in Abu Dhabi. I was enchanted.

Gosling, the young and ambitious lawyer, is sitting by the adulteress, lying on her hospital bed, lost in a hopeless coma, shot in the head by the huge and hurt ego of her cheated husband, Hopkins. The lawyer is reading a Dr. Suess poem to the sleeping lady:

The Waiting Place...

...for people just waiting.

Waiting for a train to go

or a bus to come, or a plane to go

or the mail to come, or the rain to go

or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow

or waiting around for a Yes or a No

or waiting for their hair to grow.

Everyone is just waiting.

Waiting for the fish to bite

or waiting for wind to fly a kite

or waiting around for Friday night

or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake

or a pot to boil, or a Better Break

or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants

or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.

Everyone is just waiting.

Abu Dhabi strangely sounds like this Waiting Place; everyone here is just waiting… Waiting for a friend to come or a plane to go…

And, like a certain prophet in our current virtual world, that's a bit where I am today, waiting to decide what I want to do when I grow up. Funny, how you can discover places… places to live, places to dance, places to settle, places to wait and places to leave… funny how you can read a number of books, study in a number universities, work in a number of firms… how you can meet a number of people with different stories, forget some of them, become the friend of some others… funny how you can reach 31 and still wonder that… what do I want to do when I grow up? But while the answer gets somewhat narrower over time, there are always options.

Maybe, am I also somewhere among the people described in Leonard Bernstein's Mass:

Half the people are stoned

And the other half are waiting for the next election.

Half the people are drowned

And the other half are swimming in the wrong direction.