Summertime Sadness

You know that famous song by Lana Del Rey? The one with a slightly retro sound in which she sings languidly about "summertime sadness"? Well, these days I'm often thinking about it but not about the song itself, more than anything else I think about the feeling. I wouldn't really call it sadness, what I feel is a sort of melancholy.

I love summer, everyone knows that it's my favorite season and it is no coincidence that I chose to live in a southern city, close to the sea and with a very high percentage of sunny days a year. But the summer, which I wait for all time, runs away quickly and now even the month of August 2021 is coming to an end.

Isola di Rab (Croazia 2017)

This year is different from all the others. For the first time since I started working, I have the opportunity to work and be on vacation at the same time. My hours in the kitchen of the Ginos restaurant are still a few and change from week to week. This gives me the opportunity to have many free days so I also have time to go to the beach or to rest. This is how I found myself thinking about summer, why I like it so much and this strange melancholy that it makes me feel.

I will begin by describing that feeling of freedom that I feel when I look at the sea, the lake or even just the surface of the water of a swimming pool sparkling in the sun. I can never resist a nice dip, even when the water is very cold. And then go out, lie down under the hot sun and feel so alive ... I call it the "holiday feeling" and I probably recall it to all the years of my childhood and adolescence spent in the family house by the sea on the island of Albarella. There are also some particular smells that I love, such as the scent of sunscreen or the one of fabric softener when laying down the towels on the beach. There is also the smell of cigarette's smoke spreading in the air, which maybe many will not like but I admit to always smell it with pleasure. A perfect set of elements and in a heartbeat I feel on vacation and I feel happy. The earphones and the song of the moment complete everything and I can take a few minutes to disconnect from everything and dream.

Spiaggia Jamaica, Sirmione (BS) 2018

So what does sadness have to do with it? Well in my case it is just the desire that this moment could not end and at the same time the awareness that no one can stop the cycle of the seasons or even stop the rhythm of life. And that's when I feel melancholy. For all those past moments that I have lived, that I have loved and that will never come back.

I am very sentimental when thinking back to the past and there are some summer moments that I will never forget. Summers as a child and even later as a teenager in Albarella are perhaps the most important ones. A place where I try to return whenever I can and that reminds me of an important stage of my life, a place that saw me growing up from a child to a young woman, a sea that know my most intimate secrets and that every summer helped me reborn and gave me the strength to start over.

Playa de Rodiles (Asturie, Spagna 2014)

Then something started to change. I grew up and began traveling, breaking away from my family and also taking trips with friends. The holiday in Specchiarica (Puglia) in 2011 will remain unforgettable, together with a group of friends as casual as they turned out to be perfectly matched: "Tanta Robba!" (Only those who were there will be able to understand). Then in 2013 the mother of all holidays: a surf camp in Moliets in the south of France. The right people, a road trip with cultural visits and gastronomic experiments and then a week of camping in which, during the day we tried to learn to surf and at night we tried to sleep in tents, together with many other guys from various parts of Europe. The first time I did something like this and maybe the time where I started to realize that I must and wanted to try new things to live my life to its full potential. (The following year we did the same thing in Santander, Spain).

And should we talk about that July 2015 in which me and two other crazy friends flew for three weeks to Los Angeles and San Diego to participate at the Comicon? The biggest fair for all nerds in the world of cinema, comics and cosplay? 10 pages would not be enough to tell the adventures! And then in 2016 I discovered Croatia and its wonders, Trieste and its great friends, and the quiet but adventurous holiday, the one in which every day you set off to discover a new wild beach. You swim, explore, walk, visit, eat, talk...you live.

Finally in 2018 I discovered Andalusia and the city I moved to starting from 2020. Maybe all the things I lived came together and made me get here, to experience a bit of summer all the year.

Isola di Albarella (RO) 2020

Yet despite my almost 38 years, I realize that there is still a whole world out there to discover. That it makes no sense to feel melancholy for the wonderful moments we have experienced in the past. It is true that they will not return, but we have lived them and no one will be able to take them away from us. Instead, we can continue to dream that there will be many others, and that each of these will bring us something new and add more color to the picture of our life.

I love summer and that feeling of happiness, mixed with melancholy, mixed with dreams. My Summertime Sadness...