'E cancelle

'E cancelle, the iron gates. Forty-four is the limit: the grille, the gate, the bar. But the Smorfia doesn’t read it in just one way, and that’s where its intelligence lies — a gate keeps things in and keeps things out, and its meaning changes depending on where you’re standing when you look at it. In dreams, forty-four arrives when there’s a boundary. A rule you can’t get past, a situation that keeps you stuck, a closed door. Or, from the other side, protection: something that keeps away what you don’t want, a limit you set yourself that does you good. The images that lead here open up the landscape. The gates. Transparency, because your gaze always passes through a grille. And laughter, which no bar can hold in. The Smorfia puts the bar next to what passes through it, and in doing so says the most honest thing: you only understand a limit if you know what lies beyond it. If forty-four has come up in your dream, there was a bar. Before deciding whether to tear it down, it’s worth figuring out which side you’re on — and whether that bar was put there by someone else or by you, a long time ago, for a good reason that may no longer exist.