Intimation: Hinting at a meaning but not stating it explicitly.
I was listening to my old Bob Dylan records. The song I was listening to said, among other things, “The answer my friend is blowin’ in the wind.” That’s how Dylan responded to the string of questions leading up to “Blowin’ in the wind.” What about a hurricane or a tornado? What kind of answers are blowin’ in those kinds of winds? Their “answer” can kill you. So, there’s something potentially lethal in looking for answers in the wind. You should probably just sit inside and let the answers blow away, knocking down a couple of trees as they go. Do you get it? Do you get what I’m telling you? Maybe I should be more blunt.
Answers are dangerous. They can ruin your life. I was really happy until I started looking for answers in the wind. I started being frustrated. I couldn’t sleep. I lost my friends. I lost more socks than usual and I thought my girlfriend moved out of the United States so she could get away from me “forever.” She is missing. I haven’t seen her for five years and I’m still looking for the answer “Why?”
But, I’ve invented a device to help me get answers from the wind. It is a giant ceiling fan. I call it “John’s Behemoth Fan.” It is mounted over my bed and has 8-foot blades. I use it to look for answers blowin’ in the wind. I put on my pajamas, lay on my bed and use the remote to flick the fan to “Gale Force Wind.” The wind blows 43 MPH and is supposed to spit out answers to my questions. I keep asking it where my girlfriend Mary is. The fan makes a sound like “Reykjavík.” I’m not sure if Reykjavík is just a squeaking sound in the fan drive shaft, or the city in Iceland. I’m going to lubricate the fan’s shaft this afternoon and see if it still makes a gale force wind that sounds like “Reykjavík.” I keep wondering why my girlfriend would be in Iceland, but if the answer “Reykjavík” is blowin’ in the wind, it’s likely that’s where she is.
POSTSCRIPT
He lubed the fan and it still said “Reykjavík” when he turned it on. He dropped all his other questions and flew to Reykjavík. He brought his small battery operated hand held fan. He believed that when he was in close proximity to an answer its meager wind would pull him through. It didn’t.
Shortly after arriving, he got caught in one of the gale-force winds that Iceland is known for. They blow the open doors off of cars! He was blown off of a cliff and died a broken mess on the rocks below. If he had listened more carefully, he would’ve heard the wind telling him he was going to die. Instead, he thought it was “crying Mary” and he just stood there, leaning into the gale until he was blown off the cliff. His media player was found next to his body still playing Jimi Hendrix’s song about the wind making a “Mary” sound. He had made a fatal “listening” error—wishful thinking inducing an interpretive catastrophe: the downfall of many obsessed hermeneuts.
His former girlfriend Mary is living in Portland, Oregon where she sells imported clothing. One of her top products is the “66 Degrees North” brand clothing imported from Iceland.
Mary’s shop is named “Windbreakers.” This is ironic.
Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
Daily Trope is available in an early edition on Amazon in paperback under the title of The Book of Tropes for $9.95. It is also available in Kindle format for $5.99.
The Daily Trope 