'E zizze

'E zizze, the breasts. The Smorfia names them without embarrassment and without innuendo, because in folk culture they’re nourishment first of all: everyone’s first food, the source where everything begins. Twenty-eight is the number of down-to-earth motherhood, the kind made of body and hard work, not the kind on holy cards. In dreams, twenty-eight shows up when providing for someone is involved. Not just for children: someone who supports a family, someone who keeps a project going on their own energy, someone who feels drained because everyone draws from them. It’s also the number of sensuality, and in tradition the two don’t contradict each other — the body that nourishes and the body that desires are the same body. Two images lead here. The breasts, first of all, which give the first nourishment. And the vine shoot, which carries fruit to those who come after: whoever provides usually provides for more than one. The Smorfia pairs figures by function, not by beauty, and that’s why it has held up for two centuries. If twenty-eight has come up in your dream, there was someone giving and someone receiving. The question that remains — and it isn’t ours to answer — is which side you were on, and whether you were tired at that moment.