Dino Sarti
I love you cucombra

Dino Sarti - I love you cucombra (1979)

There's something nostalgic about post-modernity's relationship with time: it's the feeling of a constant lack of it in a frantic chase for production;
look at the Pinocchio-like politicians of the Renzi era; they have something robotic, fake men about them, infantile yeswecan. So, stop for a moment, yes in a minute of sacred contemplation: take a bit of time just for yourself and go to the market, the discount store, or the street vendor and pick out a nice anguria, cocomero, popone, watermelon as it may be called: examine it carefully, and tap on it; if it sounds like a dry and hollow thud, then it's right, not overripe. The stem shouldn't be dry. If the juice oozes from where the stem is or was attached, it means the fruit is ripe and sugary. An essential accessory for summer lounging is the melon baller (also known as Baller, parisienne or scavino) that forms watermelon balls. Personally, I prefer the seedless variety, without seeds, because it keeps longer and has a particular taste. The most common type remains the Crimson sweet, which, just to change things up, comes from America: a tough rind with a light base and wide dark green stripes. The regular watermelon. The Sugar Baby has no stripes, is round and small, while the Yellow Crimson is a variety with yellow flesh, with a honey-like taste, sweeter than regular watermelons. Then there's the Orangeglo. Oblong and relatively small, it has very sweet orange flesh. Does a nice feast of watermelon wedges make you gain weight or not? I leave it to your more cool-headed experience, but be aware that because of its tendency to delay the digestion of other foods, watermelons create a feeling of satiety, making them the ideal fruit to curb hunger between meals. Cocomero derives from the Latin Cucumis, cucumber, and anguria from late Greek angurion, also cucumber.
Where does it come from? An explorer of Africa noted that watermelons grew abundantly in the Kalahari Desert, where they seem to have originated (okay, it's official, America has nothing to do with the discovery of watermelons). The Kalahari watermelon is the ancestor of today's watermelon, a wild fruit with denser flesh and a stronger taste that is eaten cooked. It also contains Lycopene, that vivid pigment giving watermelon its red color, found also in tomatoes. It is a powerful antioxidant. Many consider watermelon a remedy for male erection problems, comparing it to Viagra. There's some truth to this: watermelon contains citrulline, an amino acid considered aphrodisiac for its ability to dilate blood vessels. Unfortunately, citrulline is more concentrated in the rind than in the flesh. Watermelon naturally contains salicylates used in the pharmaceutical industry to make medicines, especially aspirin. If you're sensitive to salicylates, you might also be intolerant to watermelon. It also contains medicinal properties: reduction of blood pressure, treatment of edema and skin fungi, and much more. Watermelon contains a significant amount of beta-carotene, vitamin B, vitamin C, and essential minerals like calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, iodine, and manganese: it is also useful for constipation as it is a mild laxative. Although it contains few calories (30 per 100 grams), a single slice of watermelon can raise energy levels by 23% thanks to vitamin B6 that the body uses to synthesize dopamine. A drug, basically. In short, watermelon is the sweetest sphere there is. Thus a symbol of the divine for a few euros. The solution to all virtualities, in ancient times, the globe was a symbol of eternity due to its circular shape that has neither beginning nor end and perpetually returns into itself. One and undivided, yet common to more finite realities, the sphere was the most versatile reference of the universe, a vast congeries of centripetal and centrifugal forces. The globe in the universe and the universe in the globe: the ancients, in the venerable philosophies of Nature, associated the iconic power of the sphere with the entire universe. In statuary, we see the globe subdued by the floating foot of the goddess Fortuna or in the hands of the muse Urania, patroness of astronomical sciences. The golden ball symbolized monarchic dignity among Roman princes and Egyptian pharaohs and finally among the popes of Christianity. Spherical was God for Parmenides and Xenophanes, and this shape was considered the human soul among some philosophers of the classical world. Spherical is the god of football for the masses hypnotized by the dark allure of the ball. Among the various fruit globes, the watermelon is the world's machine par excellence: a symbol of the macrocosm and perfection, its shimmering circles seem to have captured the music of the spheres in a mandala for cultured and austere meditations. Spherical and androgynous were the primordial humans of the Platonic Symposium, and again, in the Timaeus' anthropogony, the philosopher states that the gods created man's head as a spherical body in imitation of the round shape of the stars in the universe: “...since we are not earthly but heavenly plants…Indeed, holding our root suspended with the head, right there where the soul took its first origin, the divinity raises our entire body.”

Let us sing then the hymn, the paean, the triumph of Petrarchan memory, to this humble yet mighty summer fruit, singing the delirious rhymes of the late Dino Sarti: I love you cucombra, I love you In front of you I lose all restraint. Dear companion of villages, vacations, and marine nights How many times have I fallen asleep embracing you? They say cocomero, but to me, you're "la cucombra" (for me, you're always the "cucombra") In your belly are the colors of the flag: white, red, green That time abroad, when they served you on the table, I snapped to attention What are the Piave, the Mameli anthem, in comparison? The empress didn't understand and I said: Majesty, I like (ame piace) the cucombra! Keeping up with Girardengo is not easy anyway I hold on Lorenzo the Magnificent wants to marry I have no plans, I'll start singing, just a bush, a shady spot, and a nice slice of cucombra (slice of watermelon) Fresh cucombra, frozen cucombra, even in America they don't know what it is If it weren't for the people following my every move, I, of the watermelon, would eat even the rind Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful cucombra!