'A meraviglia

'A meraviglia. Seventy-two is wonder: the face you make at something you didn’t expect. It’s one of the few numbers in the Smorfia devoted not to a thing but to a reaction — and that tells you how much, in a culture that lives on storytelling, the listener’s amazement counted. In dreams, seventy-two arrives when something surprises you. Unexpected news, a person who turns out different, and better, a coincidence so precise it makes you laugh. It’s the number of the moment the script goes out the window and something happens that nobody had planned for. Among the images that lead here are amazement and the grandfather. The grandfather is the figure who has always been there and who still surprises you now and then: an affectionate pairing, and a bit mocking, like almost everything on this list. If seventy-two showed up in your dream, there was a surprise. The Smorfia doesn’t promise that more are on the way. It points out that in your dream something caught you off guard — and wonder, unlike many other things, can’t be faked.