'E mazzate

'E mazzate. Thirty-eight is the number of conflict: blows, the quarrel, the clash. The Smorfia was born in a world where fights could be heard through the windows and weren’t hidden, and it gave that world a number without sweetening it. It should be read for what it is — a number of rupture, not of affection. In dreams, thirty-eight arrives when something collides. An argument that got out of hand, a tension that simmered for months and exploded in a minute, the sense of having taken a blow — even just with words. In dreams, the blows are almost never literal: they’re the way the body tells of a conflict the head was keeping in check. The images that lead here make a pairing that needs explaining, because otherwise it lends itself to misunderstanding. Next to the blows, tradition places the embrace and the commare (the godmother, a friend as close as family): not because those who love should hurt — there’s no ambiguity about that — but because in the popular imagination strong passions all live in the same neighborhood, and the people closest to you are also the ones who can hurt you most. If thirty-eight has shown up in your dream, there was a clash. The Smorfia names it and stops there. Whether in your life that clash is a passing quarrel, you know; and if instead it’s something you need to protect yourself from, this isn’t the place to look for answers: it’s the place to recognize that you were talking about it.