Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

There are times when the world is turned upside down and all that you can be sure of is “the grass is green” today. These are the time when inner peace is difficult to find but possible. Peace is not just saying “the grass is green” but knowing that in the best of times, which is now always, the grass is green.

April Fool, The Grass is Green

It is April Fool’s Day. A young friend, Jamie, age 25, a ski instructor, dies in a freak ski accident.  Martha Graham, age 96, a giant in modern dance and my hero, dies of heart failure. All that I think to say is "The grass is green."

The grass, stretching out in an undulating, titillating sea of color, just turned green. It did not happen all at once. First, the sun turned a dark green and winked, just once; then, the grass turned green. The shock is enormous. Orange, I understand on this special day, but green after the sun turned green was a shock. It should be some color that never was before, maybe a spotted pink. Of course, it is a green that sings of light and wonder, of dancing Tinkerbelles of photons, of whimsy in the ordinary.

If you cut a watermelon in half on April 1st, you expect oil or ping pong balls to magically appear, but you never expect the grass to stay green after the sun blinks dark green in the middle of the day. You just do not expect that sort of thing. You expect the world to be different and you are shocked that it is differently the same.

A young friend dies who should not die, and we look around and see on April 1, April Fool’s Day, that the world is the same (yet strangely different). The grass is a wondrous green, a green which I never saw before, a green to run through as if tomorrow is a dream and today is the River Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. The grass is green and the sun is a blinking light which washes the earth with the spirit of light, the fun-filled wonder of light. I silently say, "My god, the grass is green on April Fool's Day, after we talked on the phone with friends who lost a youth-filled treasure which can no longer be with us in this real world."

             I expect orange. I expect Martians to land in a flying saucer of milk. I expect Friday The 13th's   Jason to smile at me through his hockey-mask of death and flowers sprout from his fingertips. I expect a day that is different from all other days. It is the same and yet it is itself...a day, a new day unlike any other in the history of the world. The grass is green that I never saw before because it was never in the universe before.

            April Fool's Day is truly the day for the artist in all of us. It is a work of art that never happened before and will never happen again. The green is a green of living things. It is something which is new and wonderful and, strangely, safe because it is new and the same, all at once.

Some will say that the sun's light did not turn green. They will say I am mistaken, but I am not mistaken. The sun winked a dark green and the world is never the same again. It was in the South Pacific, on Guam, 19 years ago, sitting on the beach, and the sun winked green as it sank into the Pacific. After that, the world is never the same. All the sure things that my parents and teachers taught me are gone in that flash. I have to see the world for myself.

The sun turned green and I expect the grass to be some other color than green, but it fools me. As Dylan Thomas said, "The force that through the green fuse drives the flower drives my green age. That blasts the roots of trees is my destroyer. And I am dumb to tell the crooked rose, my youth is bent by the same wintry fever." It is magic green, a green that undulates in my thoughts and changes like Camelot.

"The grass is green." What a marvel, what a joy, what wonder for my living eyes. It is a green that takes young lives like Jamie and gives life to all of us. It is a green of wonder and mystery. Yet, it is a comforting green. We know that all green dies (like Martha) in the winter of our living, and each spring it comes again. It is comforting that it is a similar green but never the same.

A new day comes. It happens to be April 1 - an April Fool's Day, and the grass is green. The grass is a marvel of green, a sweeping bazaar of green.

Jamie died. We called his parents, our friends, and could not find any green words

of comfort. Images, like a green sun winking into the sea, appear of a child flying off the mantelpiece into my arms. It was another time, a green moment in time. I will always remember saying, "Fly, Jamie, fly. I will catch you." We all live a green life, alone and yet part of others. The force that through the green fuse drives the flower may have caught Jamie and Martha this time.

To question is to stay green. "Jump, jump, I will catch you, and when I cannot, you will fly or fall all by yourself."

His is the ultimate green age, to live the moment to the fullest.

I know a few things that are eternal. Spring will come again. There will be other seasons of green. Green sleeps but never dies. Love is green. Parents and friends cannot catch us all of the time when we jump, and not to jump makes us old and BROWN.

Kermit lives. The entire world is green.

One way to rediscover that “the grass is green” is to have a son who is mentally retarded. All the sophisticated education does not rub off on his life. Everything is kept simple, elemental and therefore, as a parent and teacher, you learn more than you teach. What you must do is called “creative practicing” or putting yourself in the skin of another human being. In that way, you do identify with that person and the two of you are in a peaceful centering of two that is now one.

Creative Practicing with Charly/Chris

It all began with an idea: "What is something that I wished that I could do and have never tried?"

This was extremely difficult because in my youth I had tried many things. Finally, one idea came out amongst all the others; I had never been anyone but myself.

At first, I tried to be a female- my wife or my daughter. I changed how I felt about myself so that I could experience "self" in a new way. I lost sixty-five pounds on a diet. I tried to summon up the ying and yang of myself. I failed.

The attempt was doomed from the start. I had tried to experience change by the will of my mind. Now I attempted a different tack and tried to let the decision come to me. I joined a spa and went three times a week, relaxing in the whirlpool and allowing my inner mind to swim with images. After I got out, I noted which mental images struck my mind, with what kind of intensity.

Finally, I came to the conclusion that I should try to be my son, Chris, who is mentally retarded. The decision was based on my own need for nowledge/understanding and my son's need to have someone who emotionally communicated with him. Therefore, I would be Christopher Yung Wook Kagle, adopted son of Joseph and Anne, brother of Samantha, born in Korea, raised in the South Pacific and living in Waco, Texas.

I checked on movie stars and how Dustin Hoffman prepared for his role in Rain Man.  I reread all the medical reports on my son and other literature on mental retardation. I pretended for a time to be: SUBJECT: Charly Gordon, AGE: 32, IQ: 68, OCUPATION: Janitor, from Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes.

I began to play basketball several times a week to understand how it feels to live in a world where everyone else is successful at the simplest things and you have troubles with them. I played with young people thirty years my junior: stronger and better trained. At times, I felt, no, I knew that I could do nothing that would make me jump higher or run faster. The only thing that kept me playing was the perception of myself as slimmer and the support of others who loved me.

       Chris knew that I was trying to be him. He is left-handed so I wrote left-handed at home. One day, he came into the studio and patted me on my bald spot and said, "You are thin. I am thin. Hulk Hogan is super strong. I like TV shows like Life Goes On, Who's The Boss? and Growing Pains."

He was kind. I am not as thin as I had been. I have gained back twenty-some pounds. I appreciated his words though. I need all the help that I can get.

As I got closer to my goal of understanding myself as someone else, I understood the frustration and the yearning for success. I felt that I was Joe Average who had stumbled into an MIT symposium on advanced quantum physics.  

            Love was the one ingredient that came from my son without strings. Many mentally retarded citizens are the warmest, most giving, and, at times, most frightened individuals that I have known. Intellectually, I think that I now understand what Freud meant when he said, "What I am trying to find is man's deepest strata." We are all like a tree where the years bring rings of understanding but we are also small, inarticulate children at our core.

          Chris has won some measure of success in Special Olympics. He has won medals for running. His battle in living is just beginning. Emotionally, I do not know if I can ever understand the need to find success in Chris' terms, but I now know some of the frustration and the anger. Most of all, I know the depth of love that can span two intellects. Although, in one sense, I failed as I will   never truly be my son; in a richer sense, any parent who tries this creative practicing with their child will find immeasurable success