In the Gold Castle With Aaron

It was a beautiful day in DC yesterday. Sunny, but not too bright. Cool, but not cold. The slightest breeze, an easy breeze. It was quiet and calm around the Embassy of Israel, which is near the Embassy of Pakistan, and of Bangladesh, across from the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China. It abuts a residential area, and is close to a park and the University of DC. People were walking their dogs, walking with each other.

It was a week since Aaron’s immolation. I think I heard of it as soon as I woke the Monday after, through Instagram, maybe. Sam was in bed next to me, seeing the same thing. I got on twitter to find out more. There were beautiful messages of recognition, respect, and tribute. There were sentiments that disgusted and enraged me.

I’ve been reading everything religious lately: Sufi poetry, zen texts, the Quran, the Tao Te Ching, Thich Nhat Hanh, Simone Weil, C.S. Lewis. I’ve been listening. I’ve been going into churches. It’s necessary. I am in need of comfort and resilience to say nothing of general improvement. And in these texts there is a recurring theme of discernment, of aspiring to wield the sword of discrimination. It’s a most uncommon and worthy wisdom to know exactly what you do, why you do it, and who you do it for. These insights give you peace and courage, two elements I would love to have more of.

So I’ve been thinking about recognizing what is essential, not (only) essential as in crucial but essential as in essence. One translation of Surah Al-A’raf (199) is “Make due allowance for human nature, and urge the doing of what is right; and leave alone all those who choose to remain ignorant.” “I have nothing to do with ignorant people in this world. I didn’t come here for them,” wrote Shams Tabrizi. “I put my seal upon these people who show the path to the Truth.” In Le Guin’s version of the Tao Te Ching, she writes:

To be able to separate the essential, the truthful, and the eternal from the superficial, the ignorant, and the temporary; to know who you came here for—I have no denomination, no labeled faith, but yes, that is to be blessed.

There were posters and Palestinian flags around the embassy, and several sets of chairs with a few people in them, chatting. There is an organized effort to keep people there so Aaron’s memorial will not be (again) destroyed. There were cops, of course. There was a little stand for coffee, maybe food, too. A bag for trash. A plastic bin of fresh flowers was labeled as such and put near the altar. I brought candles and I lit them. Most of the others had gone out so I hunted for them under the flowers and signs and moved them into the open air. They were tall and short, all shapes, some scented; people brought whatever they had at hand, as did I. I shook out the rain and dug out the wicks. I lit them. It felt good to have something to do there, to assume the honor of tending a grave. A woman brought a little girl by, and she laid down flowers. A man came with a very little boy, and read aloud to him the message left by another child: “I hope you are having fun in the gold castle in heaven.” She’d drawn herself with Aaron, two smiling stick figures who really did look like they were having fun.

At home, even as I took out the candles, I thought of what it means to light a fire for Aaron, and at his memorial I thought of it again. I thought of The Boy and the Heron, when a joyful Himi goes into her future knowing she’ll die in a blaze and tells her son, “I’m not afraid of fire.” I keep starting and stopping this. I wanted to write it, then I didn’t want to write. Or I wanted to write it but I didn’t want to share it. It’s easy to describe what I think and feel, harder to prepare someone to read what I think and feel so that they can understand. But then, is it hard? Or is it impossible? What can be extorted from someone unwilling or incapable of giving it?

What Aaron did was holy. I can’t explain that to anyone, and I won’t argue about it. You either see it or you don’t. The vicious bickering online, about suicide and mental health and the military and which white American deserves the badge of caring the most about Palestinians, the aggressive denial of the point, was so corrosive to me until I reminded myself that it’s not for me and I don’t have to read it. Other people not knowing doesn’t change the truth, so why would their not knowing change my recognition of it? People in Gaza know, and people in Yemen. Millions of people around the world don’t worry that acknowledging the sacredness of Aaron Bushnell’s self-immolation is proof that they're actually, somehow, very bad. And I don’t need anyone apathetic in the face of genocide to tell me what does and doesn’t matter. I don’t trust people who don’t know what it means to live to tell me what it means to die.

Surah Al-An’am (104) says “whoever chooses to see does so for the benefit of their own soul, and whoever chooses to remain blind does harm against it.”

This world will not forget you, Aaron Bushnell. Thank you for what you did. I hope you are having fun in the golden castle. Free Palestine. Free Palestine. Free Palestine.