'E fasule

'E fasule, beans. It’s the humblest number in the Smorfia, and that’s exactly why it matters. Beans were the meat of people who couldn’t afford meat: you soaked them the night before, they simmered slowly all day, and they filled you up. Ten carries that dignity inside it — the simple thing that keeps you on your feet when there’s nothing else. In dreams, ten arrives when the talk is about what holds you up without making noise. An unexciting job that still pays the rent, a routine that keeps you together through the hard months, a person who’s always there and never asks for anything. It isn’t the number of turning points: it’s the number of endurance, which counts for more in everyday life. The images that lead here say it with force. Beans, of course. And then the ammolatore, the knife grinder, and waiting: two opposite ways of toiling — one makes his rounds every day without complaining, the other doesn’t move a thing and wears you out all the same. In your dream it matters which of the two was there, because ten speaks of toil, and toil can be carried either way. Ten doesn’t promise anything and doesn’t ask anything of you. It points out that in the dream there was something not very showy that still holds you up — and the things that hold us up, we usually notice only when they start to go missing.