'A funtana

'A funtana. Seventy-six is the fountain, and to understand it you have to remember what public fountains were: for centuries there was no running water at home, and people went to the fountain every day, with buckets, alongside everyone else. It was the place where you got water and where you heard the neighborhood news — a service and a meeting place in the same gesture. That’s where the number gets its meaning: the spring that never runs dry, water that comes on its own and belongs to everyone. It isn’t the abundance of four, which piles up and gets stored away; it’s the kind you don’t own, that you only have to take, and that for that very reason nobody thinks of guarding. In dreams, seventy-six shows up when something renews you. Energy found again after a rough patch, an idea that brings three more with it, a person who always leaves you better than they found you. And it also arrives when you need to recharge: in dreams you look for strength when you’re running dry, and whoever doesn’t find it notices when they wake up. Among the images that lead here is the waterfront, and in Naples you only have to name it to see it, with kids all around and someone waiting for the ferry. If seventy-six showed up in your dream, there was a source in it. The Smorfia doesn’t tell you to drink from it, or to protect it: it points out that in your dream something was giving without asking, and it’s worth knowing what it was.