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| Korean War Veterans Memorial, Washington DC, taken October 2010 |
Those stony eyes just stare back at you, never flinching much like the rest of the soldier, hunching mid-trudge. The memorial does its job. It reminds you of things you’ve never seen. Of pain you’ll never experience. Those eyes made of stone simply a cold shell shaped by a sculptor’s hand that will somehow, with no words, no sound, destroy at least a little bit of that innocence which you have the privilege to own.
Telepathy has been and always will be real. Via such memorials as these, men and women I’ve never met have spoken to me and told me countless stories about the world and about history. They have been able to do so despite barriers of time and place and with nothing more than strokes of pens and brushes, shaping of metal, and light captured by the mechanical eye of a camera.
In this way, walking through DC and stumbling upon memorials I hadn’t realised were around the corner or at the end of the path, I was able to absorb pieces of history, just some of the pieces of the very story of humanity. I saw, if only for a few moments, the men in the jungles, among the trees, the fears in their eyes. I felt the rapid beats of their hearts and the tremors in their limbs as they continued their way towards an uncertain destiny.
I then had the liberty of feeling that shot to the heart, that ache that is born when you realise just how many people have sacrificed and have been sacrificed for the very world in which I have the privilege to live; those who have literally lain down and become the pavestones of the paths and roads which brought us here.
On their backs, exists my life, lest we forget. Lest we ever forget the debt we owe. Lest we ever forget the need to bring true legacy forward.
This is the world. In one is all.
I remember being struck by how little I had really pondered this particular war. Men died as they always do when mankind decides to decimate one another for whatever reasons, whatever gains. Yet historically tucked (conveniently or inconveniently) between WWII and the Vietnam War, a mind so happily untouched by such large scale conflict as mine was able to simply forget. As far as I know, I lost no one in this war. But many did and many will never forget. They have no luxury like mine.
I have learned a great deal every time I’ve had the fortune and opportunity to travel. Largely, what I’ve learned is that my life is one of great comfort and privilege.
And, on my life, I wonder if I will ever be able to truly conjure a means by which to express gratitude or appreciation.
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