Enigma (e-nig’-ma): Obscuring one’s meaning by presenting it within a riddle or by means of metaphors that purposefully challenge the reader or hearer to understand.
“The four-legged rover was perambulating on the greensward, fetching the soft sphere, like a saliva-splattered roadmap to never-ending bliss.” Job
I had to work hard to extract coherent meanings from my buddy Job’s speech. The giveaways in the quote above were “four-legged” and “soft sphere.” Clearly, he was referring to playing fetch with his dog Deliah. I asked him if I was right. Instead of saying “yes” or “no” he said, “Good tidings to you young Joseph. Your surmise is a meal to my famished soul, a repast filling the space between I and Thou with a scintillating rainbow bridge—a two-way boulevard we travel together, like homing pigeons winging home.” This was a definite “Yes” with not much interpretation necessary, and he had included a reference to our friendship as well—the “rainbow boulevard.”
Job was a piece of work. But being a conversation partner with him took interpretative work. However, it was work with a reward: A friendship that had endured since our days at Sacred Spirit College where we were imbued with spiritual values. I aspired to sell used cars upon graduation, and Job’s aspiration was to be a prophet.
I own “Chevy Bevy” where I sell used Chevrolet cars and trucks. Job failed as an actual prophet: he learned how to “talk the talk” but not how to “walk the walk.” In instead, he got a job at “Bible World” an affiliate of Sacred Spirit College. He played the Prophet Isaiah. Isaiah, a Hebrew prophet was known for his lengthy prophecies of the coming of a Messiah. Here’s a sample from Isaiah I:
Hear me, you heavens! Listen, earth!
For the Lord has spoken:
“I reared children and brought them up,
but they have rebelled against me.
3 The ox knows its master,
the donkey its owner’s manger,
but Israel does not know,
my people do not understand.”
It is freighted with deep symbolic significance; the kind that Job strives to mimic in his everyday speech. Speaking biblically in everyday speech has also affected his character. In many ways it has made more annoying to spend time with.
Everything had to smack of the prophetic voice. No aspect of his life is untouched by the gravitas and convoluted certitude. For the sake of his job, he has forsaken the simplicity of “yes” and “no.” He is like Republican politicians testifying in a committee hearing, where they refuse to give simple yes or no answers to yes or no questions, and instead, ramble on about the question, evading it without ever giving an answer to it. For example, we were walking along Grove Street, I asked him “Are we on Grove street, yes or no?”
He responded, “This sidewalk is a concrete ligament linking us to all points beyond and within it. It intersects Cherry and Green Avenues, other streets with other destinations stretching far and wide, with curbs carved down where they meet the flowing rivers of conveyances rolling to their endings at banks, and malls, and residences mounted on their grassy shores, though this grove here is where we stride.”
This is a doozy. But, the key is the references to sidewalks throughout, and “grove” at the very end clinch its meaning.. The naming of Cherry and Green streets further tightens the hermeneutic circle like a lasso around Grove Street’s obscured neck: The answer is yes..
I know my interpretation does not do justice to the annoying convolutions of Job’s response. Straight talk is beyond him. I understand this, and take pride in being his friend and not a swollen pressure flushing the tides of his sea of meaning down a swirling whirlpool of my own design.
The Daily Trope 