A Love Like Fire: Ode to Aaron Bushnell

Monthly Newsletter | Australia, March 2024

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When I first saw the image, I went numb. And I kept scrolling on my phone to other things. And then I forgot.

A writer’s job - if any - is to tell the truth. Not to enchant or cast more spells. We have enough of that in celebrity adoration and mainstream news.

We serve Veritas, the Roman Goddess of Truth.

The role of the writer is to tell the truth. ‘Not to say what we can all say, but what we are unable to say,’ writes Anais Nin.

The truth is, when I first saw Aaron burning, I checked out.

It was too much.

I cleaned the kitchen. I baked a loaf of bread. I played some semblance of fetch with my dog though he never brings the stick back.

Because how does one come to terms with such a thing?

I’m shaking as I write this now.

Today I was able to feel him.

I saw his image appear again on my feed and this time I went in. And I looked up what had happened. And I watched the video of him burning.

As a man holds a fire extinguisher, another holds a gun.

If our world still proclaimed saints, Aaron would be one of them. As would Rachel Corrie, who was crushed to death by an Israeli bulldozer as she tried to protect a home in Gaza back in 2003. Her parents published her diary entries under the book title Let me Stand Alone, which I highly recommend. Her writing, courage and time in Palestine greatly influenced me in my teens.

All the men, women and children from Palestine who are being ruthlessly slaughtered, still, would be saints, if our world still proclaimed them.

So many of us choose indifference because it is all just too much. We can only look away and continue on.

But today I wept for him. After reading all the articles I could find and watching the video and looking for his photos to feel more of who he was, I stumbled outside and fell to my knees.

I struck the Earth again and again and wailed.

The parrots in the tree above me continued to feast on the nectar of new blossoms that have just come out. My dog padded over and gave my cheek a big lick before bouncing off to play with his stick. And I was faintly aware of a magpie singing somewhere in the distance.

And I was saved, again, by the beauty of the natural world.

Mary Oliver knew of the consolations particular to nature. In her poem Wild Geese, she writes,

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Deeply moving display of solidarity by US veterans burning their uniforms in comradeship with Bushnell

But how do we live with this?

All those of us outside Gaza have a civic and moral responsibility here. We know by now the actions we have to take - calling our Representatives, boycotting, protesting, petitioning, donating, educating and amplifying Palestinian voices.

But there is an inner duty that insures we continue these actions until there is a ceasefire and then again, until Palestine is free.

And that demands the question as to whether we have the grit to stay present.

It’s okay to check out for a time. To retreat and recover.

We act as a unit around the world and while some pull back others step forward. We take it in turns in the same way a team does.

But we can’t remain checked out.

‘Indifference is the seat of the devil,’ wrote Lorca.

Our moral and civic duty is to stay open, vigilant, and present.

This is what it means to truly bear witness: to contain suffering.

From the Buddhist perspective, or from that of the Zen Peacemakers Order, bearing witness isn’t the voyeurism that we find in the consumption of other’s distress while we have our breakfast.

It doesn’t just mean witnessing as a removed observer, but becoming that which we are witnessing.

We become the Palestinian child who has been orphaned and the mother whose child has been blown to shreds. We become the man digging in the ashes of his home for the limbs of his murdered family, and the woman giving birth in the rubble; the old man left without a wheelchair and the school teacher being treated for his wounds without anaesthetic.

In his poem on How Not to Commit Suicide, David Lerner says,

‘the trick is to  live with utter despair 
without utterly despairing'

By bearing witness, we become the situation.

This invokes the sense of our interconnectedness with everything.

And I think only when we feel ourselves to be truly a part of the tapestry of things will be understand Nelson Mandela’s plea: no one is free until we are all free.

Thích Quảng Đức protesting the persecution of Tibetan Buddhists by the Chinese Communist Party through self-immolation on 11 June 1963.

Cartoon by Brazilian political cartoonist Carlos Latuff comparing Bushnell to Thích Quảng Đức

For those of you that this is news to:

Aaron Bushnell was a twenty-five year old serviceman of the US airforce. He set himself on fire in front of the Israeli Embassy last Sunday, February 25th, in protest of the genocide.

Self-immolation is an extreme act of political protest.

A similar act occurred in December. But oddly I can’t find the woman’s name anywhere or any information on her. All we know is that she draped herself in the Palestinian flag in front of the Israeli Consulate in Atlanta and set herself on fire. A security guard tried to intervene and obtained some burns. It’s really strange that there isn’t any more information available on this. Did she survive?

What we do find is that this act is classified as being anti-semitic. And Aaron is being dismissed as having mental health problems. If he was Arab, they would call him a terrorist.

Anything to divert us from the truth of this being an act of total despair. It reflects the absolute incompetence of our authorities and, as Aaron said in his last video as he walked towards the Israeli Embassy, ‘this is what our ruling classes decided would be normal.’

The term immolation comes from the Latin immolare meaning “to sprinkle with sacrificial meal”, and “to sacrifice" in ancient Roman religion (Word Histories).

Self-immolation is a form of self-sacrifice in the name of a cause. It is the ultimate display of solidarity, human compassion and despair in the face of injustice.

If your heart breaks for the Palestinians, then you too will have likely felt yourself crushed by this type of despair that makes one want to use their bodies as a shield. My first response to October 7th was to get on a flight and use my western privilege in defence of the Palestinians. I knew what was coming. Having been in Palestine and been aware of the Occupation for years, it was obvious: October 7th would be used as a ploy to justify an invasion of Gaza and the ensuing settlement of Israelis there.

I can relate with the level of despair that drew Aaron to turn to self-sacrifice as the only way out of the barbarism that our leaders are making us complicit in.

It is crippling.

I wonder what his internal world was like leading up to his death. How he felt when he lay down to go to sleep the night before, knowing it would be his last night.

I wonder what his last words were to his mother, and who was the last person he kissed.

We know what his last words were:

Free Palestine

He chanted them repeatedly as his body burnt.

It is our moral duty to let Aaron lead us into more alertness, vigilance and responsibility.

This is a moment in history in which we need to be wide awake.

---

Poetry Offering

Whales Weep Not!

D. H. Lawrence, from The Complete Poems of D. H. Lawrence

They say the sea is cold, but the sea contains
the hottest blood of all, and the wildest, the most urgent.

All the whales in the wider deeps, hot are they, as they urge
on and on, and dive beneath the icebergs.
The right whales, the sperm-whales, the hammer-heads, the killers
there they blow, there they blow, hot wild white breath out of
   the sea!

And they rock, and they rock, through the sensual ageless ages
on the depths of the seven seas, 
and through the salt they reel with drunk delight
and in the tropics tremble they with love
and roll with massive, strong desire, like gods.
Then the great bull lies up against his bride
in the blue deep bed of the sea,
as mountain pressing on mountain, in the zest of life:
and out of the inward roaring of the inner red ocean of whale-blood
the long tip reaches strong, intense, like the maelstrom-tip, and
   comes to rest
in the clasp and the soft, wild clutch of a she-whale's
   fathomless body.

And over the bridge of the whale's strong phallus, linking the
   wonder of whales
the burning archangels under the sea keep passing, back and
   forth,
keep passing, archangels of bliss
from him to her, from her to him, great Cherubim
that wait on whales in mid-ocean, suspended in the waves of the
   sea
great heaven of whales in the waters, old hierarchies.

And enormous mother whales lie dreaming suckling their whale-
   tender young
and dreaming with strange whale eyes wide open in the waters of
   the beginning and the end.

And bull-whales gather their women and whale-calves in a ring
when danger threatens, on the surface of the ceaseless flood
and range themselves like great fierce Seraphim facing the threat
encircling their huddled monsters of love.
And all this happens in the sea, in the salt
where God is also love, but without words:
and Aphrodite is the wife of whales
most happy, happy she!

and Venus among the fishes skips and is a she-dolphin
she is the gay, delighted porpoise sporting with love and the sea
she is the female tunny-fish, round and happy among the males
and dense with happy blood, dark rainbow bliss in the sea.

*Subtitle prayer excerpt from Rumi poem “Be Crumbled”