📿For the Love of Basil in Challenging Times

It's about joy. And perspective.

Hello you, Adreanna here with this week’s dispatch of The Laundry —

Through the month of July I am half girl and half basil.

I roll the windows up on my way home from the farmers market and huff the aroma that fills our car. It’s a scent that makes me swoon. It’s become a seasonal breath work practice at this point; inhaling so deeply in the presence of basil that I can almost taste the color green. If you’re unfortunate enough to be standing in line with me at the market, you’ll likely be an accessory to my enthusiasm. “Can you even BELIEVE this BASIL?!” I’m known to gush as I fill my canvas bag with bundled bouquets. I might search your face for the same level of enthusiasm, and if I find it, we’re bonded for life. 

The skin beneath my thumbnails is regularly stained with that same lively green from manually nipping the leaves off of the stems. I pile handfuls of basil leaves on sourdough topped with a juicy slice of tomato, sprinkle some salt, and fly my tastebuds to the moon. Is there actually anything better than basil with heirloom tomatoes in July?

On a recent episode of the Hulu show, The Bear, I heard the phrase that “if it grows together, it goes together”, which I like as a crib sheet for cooking and assembly. Basil goes with grilled peaches, and cubed watermelon, buttery sweet corn… but TOMATOES. If the long days of July had a flavor profile, this combination might be it. This is the open faced sandwich that I’ll live on well into August when they begin to thin from the market, ringing the first death knell of summer. 

I could write volumes on my love for basil. And honestly, I just might. It’s a daily joy that I don’t want to take for granted, especially right now. There’s a big-picture tension that’s palpable. I feel it, I experience it. Maybe you feel it too. It’s a collective breath holding, through gritted teeth, just waiting for a shoe to drop, a crash to happen. 

I recently had a meditation student ask me if I thought this was an American thing, this tension, given our political situation. (“Situation” is a diplomatic take.) I don’t know. I genuinely don’t. My hunch, though, is that it’s more global. 

Alongside politics, there’s also the unchecked, speeding freight train of climate change. Economic disparity. Myriad crimes against humanity. The event horizon of artificial intelligence. I know that I don’t need to remind you. Even if you live under a well insulated rock, the undercurrent of societal tension is likely still there.

I’ve been noticing for myself that when I telescope my perspective out to a particular radius (lets say it’s a radial view of society), every muscle in my body tenses. I am enraged, and terrified frankly, especially now that I’m tasked with preparing my baby girl to live in a society and climate that are undergoing seismic shifts. This is an important place to visit, to look from. And it’s also not the only view. 

If I telescope my perspective even further out, I can see the big blue ball that is our planet. I think of Carl Sagan’s famous monologue about our home planet as a “pale blue dot”. It begins:

“Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there-on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”

It’s a moving shift in perspective, widening our aperture out to the cosmic view, and worth listening to Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot in full, even if you’re already familiar.

I’ve been noticing for myself that when I telescope my perspective out to this radius (lets say it’s a radial view of our planet), every muscle in my body expands. I feel uncontrollably weepy; overcome by the miracle, and how fragile and stupid and lovable and lucky we all are. This can also be an important place to visit, to look from. And it’s also not the only view. Some things don’t function as well from the cosmos; like writing deadlines or dentist appointments. 

And then— there is basil. Can I share more about my feelings for basil? I’m joking. Kind of. 

There’s a word that I recently learned (and love) which is inscendence; a counter point to transcendence. It names the urge to climb deeper into the earth as a means of touching the divine, and was coined by eco-theologian Thomas Berry. My working theory is that part of my swoon over basil is that it’s a portal to my incendence. It places me smack dab in season. It places me right here in time. It places me in communion with the earth as an experience of home. It hits the immediacy of my senses. 

Basil happens when I telescope my lens all the way back in, so that I’m looking right here, in the Hudson Valley, middle of July. Let’s say that this is a radial view of the present— and from this perspective I feel alive. Human. Hot and sticky in this 90 degree heat. Also, basil is just delicious. It’s verdant, peppery, lush. And right now, at the height of summer, from the perspective of my porch, I will take accessible joy. Joy is also an important place to visit, to look from.

This is how we respect the miracle. 

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