Touching the Void at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier

In 2005, for reasons that justify my use of the passive voice here, I found myself in Arlington National Cemetery, watching the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, surrounded by 40-50 other high school kids. We stood in long, tight lines, watching a soldier march back and forth for about twenty minutes, until a couple other soldiers came for the ceremony.

It’s always sobering to be in a graveyard, that much more so in the largest graveyard in America, that much more so when those graves are filled with people who died slaves, were killed in wars, largely stopped living pretty young. Some headstones mark the lives of people who weren’t buried at all because there was nothing left.

Twenty minutes is a long time to stand in silence. Your mind wanders, but then you remember the person you're watching march is relatively close to the place he may be buried, or you think about how many people are dying for no reason as you’re standing where their remains will be shipped or you wonder where the people they‘re killing will be put to rest.

Toward the end of this long moment, after witnessing the soldier march for at least 15 minutes, a young Republican type immediately in front of me pulled out her flip phone to read a text: “What are you doing?”

She wrote back: “Watching a guy walk like he just got fucked in the ass.”

I was knocked, with the force of a bullet train, into the bardo.