'A paposcia

'A paposcia. It’s a word you rarely hear today that people once understood instantly: the hernia, the swelling, the ailment that isn’t a serious illness but is always there. Forty is the number of chronic nuisance — the thing that doesn’t stop you and doesn’t go away, and that in the end you learn to live with. In dreams, forty arrives when something has gone on too long. A small pain you’ve been carrying around for months, a matter never fully closed, a person who every so often turns up again to cause a problem. It isn’t a dramatic number: it’s the number of forced patience, the patience of someone who lives with a weight because removing it would cost more than keeping it. Among the images that lead here, two are enough. The paposcia. And lightning, which here is the sudden twinge — the thing that comes all at once, that burns, that makes itself felt. Together they tell forty well: something that flares up now and then and goes back to smoldering. If forty has shown up in your dream, there’s a nuisance keeping you company. The Smorfia doesn’t tell you to treat it or to put up with it: it points out that it has lasted long enough to make its way into your dreams, and that in itself is usually worth knowing.