smell the clovers while you can

THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILER INFO!

friday night i saw cloverfield, the much-hyped j.j. abrams flick about a monster destroying new york city. the movie was intense, disturbing, and gave me a small sense of actual fear. a videotape is "retrieved from an incident cite formerly known as central park" - and this videotape is what we see in the film. interestingly, that is all we see, and all the information we are ever given. we are never told what the monster is (although we see it during the film), where it is from, why it is destroying new york, or what the final outcome is beyond the end of the tape. we never even know who has found the tape, or how far into the future they are. the tape was filmed by "hud" as he and his friends lily, rob, and jason (and marlena, a girl he likes) try to escape the chaos, and rescue rob's love interest beth, who is trapped in her apartment four miles away. hud was originally filming a goodbye party for rob when the poop hit the fan, so he takes the camera outside and keeps on filming.
there is only one large monster in cloverfield (and its steps span city blocks), but as an added bonus there are (hundreds?) of smaller crab/spider-type creatures attached to the large monster which drop off and scamper off into the darkness. it was great to see them drop off through the shaky lens of the hud's video camera because it really struck you with the "did i just see that?" or "what the heck was that?" kind of feeling.
the film overall seems to be a moral reminding us all to cherish the seemingly "average" days we are given, and to realize that regardless of the plans we are making and the things we are working toward, we never know which day will be our last. throughout the movie, the tape jumps between the chaos and a day several months earlier when rob and beth had first spent the night together, and then spent the following day having fun at coney island. we find out that the video camera actually belongs to rob, who had left the coney island tape in the camera, and that hud has accdintally taped the cloverfield chaos over it, leaving small bits of the coney island day interspersed throughout. even though rob is young, has a good job that is transferring him to japan, he never realized that he would be dead within 24 hours, and he probably never realized that the day with beth on coney island would be the last good day they would have together. all the characters in the film eventually die, and the last scene is of beth at coney island saying something about how "today was a good day." it very much left me with the impression that we should value each day we are given, since we never know which one will be our last. and we should also value the friendships and relationships we have, since we never know how ling they will last.
it reminds me of ecclesiastes 9.9 which reminds us to enjoy the days of our fleeting life. the "average" days are important, and we should view them as gifts. i hope rob lived the day at coney island to the full, and maybe even ate an extra churro.
also the man in jesus' parable in luke 12.20 who is doing well in life, but never realizes that he is destined to die that very night. rob was planning to move to japan, but his life was cut short 24 hours later. although the parable is primarily a warning against greed and hoarding one's wealth, we still need to be reminded that our plans can be changed very quickly.

exegesis and hermeneutics

i've been reading st. augustine's confessions for what seems like months and months, and in book XII, section 18 he brings up a question that some friends and i have been trying to answer lately. when we interpret scripture, is it more important to understand the historical context and original meaning from the original author to the original recipients (exegesis); or is it more important to apply it to our lives now (hermeneutics) and to try to hear what the Spirit is saying through the passage to our contemporary lives, through a more allegorical interpretation.

considering any particular passage augustine says "how can it harm me if i understand the writer's meaning in a different sense from that in which another understands it?" and further along he says "...what harm is there if a reader believes what you, the Light of all truthful minds, show him to be the true meaning? it may not even be the meaning which the writer had in mind..."

i lean further to the side of exegesis, but i do think the Spirit speaks in mysterious ways to our current circumstances as well.

around the hollywood in 1 days

so this last week i saw the dvd set of michael palin's around the world in 80 days, in which the monty pythoner set out to do just that - traverse the globe in 80 days, but without the use of any type of aircraft. it is a great bbc series, and even though it was filmed quite a while ago, it is still as interesting as ever. he was on trains so much that he inspired me to go on my own train journey from pasadena to hollywood. not as exotic to be sure, but i did get to see strange new wildlife nonetheless. there was the woman asleep on the train in a position sure to cause permanent spinal damage; the motormouth girl from turkey who was having problems with her dad not understanding her; the young man trying to figure out an alternate entrance into universal studios because he had been kicked out. my goal was to see hollywood in one day, and make it back to the train in time to get back to pasadena. i accomplished my goal, even if i barely made it back to the night's last train as the doors were closing...