'O monaco

'O monaco. Thirty-seven is the monk, and in Naples behind this figure stands another one everybody knows: 'o munaciello, the little spirit who slips into houses, moves things around, plays pranks and sometimes leaves money on the dresser. Between the monk and the sprite, tradition has never really chosen — and that very ambiguity is what makes the number interesting. In dreams, thirty-seven shows up when there’s something that can’t be explained. An object you can’t find where you left it, a noise in the house at night, a sense of a presence. But also its serious side: the need for silence, the wish to withdraw from the world a little, a question that isn’t practical and keeps coming back. The images that lead here are as light as he is. The monk. Flight, which is leaving without making a sound. And the fable, which changes shape every time you tell it. In the Smorfia, spiritual things are never solemn: they’re made of the same stuff as the wind. If thirty-seven has come up in your dream, there was something unexplained in it. We won’t tell you what it was — that would be the opposite of what we do. We’ll say that your dream had a shadowy corner, and that in Naples shadowy corners are named with respect and without fear.