Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Peace Essays

Clearer Focus on Everyday Things

None of us can live lives totally apart from each other. When you are lying on your back after a surgeon has used what feels like a can opener on your chest and your right leg aches from stitches and clamps, you know that you are alive. You would feel nothing if the opposite was true. Life is sometimes a pain but it is life. And in that state of grace, on your back in a bed, allowed to walk if you can (which I did), you think of many things: fellowship, love, children, the warm sun, patterns, a need to move and ‘when I get out I will….’ There is a kind of peace after pain.

Heart Surgery puts a clearer focus on everyday things

The sun really does send rays of warm greeting each morning.  Not seeing it can make existence gray and overcast.  Oh, the sun is there all the time.  Being forced into the hospital for major surgery can turn everything inside a little darker.

     One day, the sun began to shine in the middle of my hospital room.  Open-heart surgery can bring some things clear and sure.  I got a card from friends that had two cavemen holding a wild cat over a patient with the inscription “Primitive Cat Scan.”  It hurt to laugh, but I did.

     None of us can live lives totally apart from each other.  In the 15^th century, the clarity of the Renaissance sun illuminated Europe’s dark ages when the Continent discovered that all of Greek knowledge had not been lost.  The Arabs had saved it in the Alexandria Library.

     The “dark ages” were only in the minds of a sick Europe.  For a few days, waiting for the surgeon to begin his craft, I had my own dark period.  I misplaced the blessing of the sun, the challenge of new ideas and images of warmth.

     Naming what was wrong helped.  My doctor said, “You have five blocked arteries in five major areas of our heart.”

     He named the dark place.  Now it was up to me, and not some unnamed, mystery-filled disease that made chest pains, breath short and nights long. 

     After surgery, by doctor’s orders, I could not go to work.  I sat doing nothing for a few days as the cuts healed. My mind worked though.  I gained insight into the lives of others who must deal with illness and pain all the time.

      This was my first serious illness in a lifetime of work and pleasure.  Maslow’s hierarchy of needs was in my chest.  Health, food, clothing, and shelter were essentials.  It was not until I reached out that the world rushed back in.

Not all-consuming

     Oh, I am still weakened by the struggle, but the illness and surgery are not the center of my living.  It remains a threat to my living, but does not totally fill my being.  Having time to roam the world in my mind, after drawing every corner of my hospital confinement.  I thought of others who were like me.

      I pictured Coleridge’s ancient mariner (from” The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”).  He was caught up in his own problems an albatross around his neck.

     He never reached out his feeling to the dead bodies of the other sailors lying around his feet on the deck of the ship.  He, like most of us, forgot how lucky he was to be alive.  It was only when he saw his fallen shipmates that the weight of the dead bird fell away.

    The ancient mariner was still a prisoner on the ship of life, but his spirit could fly.

       One master of the Renaissance, Michelangelo, on creating the idea for the Tomb of Julius the Second, envisioned a first level with tortured slaves who were bound in their own misery, a second level of individuals like Moses were able to look out from the entrapment of their bodies and see life’s wonder, and a third level of angels with God (and of course Julius II, Michelangelo’s patron, the pope) who were eternally free from the ship of life.

     Powerful teacher

     Over the last few weeks, I appreciated the mariner and Michelangelo’s concept of Mosses more than I ever did in literature or art history classes.  Having a multiple heart bypass is a powerful teacher.  Only when one walks the line between great forces, like life and death, can art and literature come alive.

     Being a prisoner on the ship of a hospital changes a person by bring the outside word into focus.  Simple acts like breathing are never again taken for granted.  Touching someone you love is a continuing ritual of sharing life.

    The heart is the engine of life for the body.  When it is damaged, it fights for its own right to live and weakens the whole structure in the struggle.  As I heal now, I know the battle will probably be won be me.

    But a lesson is etched in my chest.  There has a grown a deep respect for the real heroes of living.  It is an homage of wonder for others who much fight a lifetime of disease and pain yet still find glory in the warmth of the sun.  When I saw them in the hospital, my albatross fell too.

Also, it certainly helps to be able to laugh (coughing was no fun). Humor is a medicine that everyone should take each day. Take a laugh four times a day, get rest and if the laughs hurt, hold your pillow tight to your chest.

Wanted: Tattoos to cover scars

     After my heart surgery, I was told that rehabilitation was a must. Therefore I began the treadmill, the, bicycle, weight lifting and leg lifts.

     All around were leg scars from heart bypasses, chest scars, etc. My own scars were healing but I knew that there is no eraser to take them away.

     The older that you get the more lines are drawn by a scalpel on the canvas of your skin. You wake in the morning, shower and see the red lines which will last for^- your lifetime.

     In a painting, if you can't fix something, you start over or use what has happened. No one has figured out how to inter­change a scarred body, for a clean new one. Maybe we can use the scars, as the beginning of tattoos.

     I wrote to Dennis Rodman and asked his advice, since, his body was his canvas of choice. He did not write back and his tattoos were not the ones that I would have chosen.

     Most tattoos are boring: I did not want a heart with an arrow, or the comic book images that litter some bodies, or Japanese- prints by Hi­roshigi or Kanasada which fill the whole canvas of the back, chest, legs and arms.

     The Internet was a fasci­nating source for information but as I searched I got lost in tattoos for gangs and tattoos which told others that you were homosexual.

     I visited the tattoo studio in downtown Waco and reviewed books of tattoos, just as if I was looking for new carpet. I went, back and interviewed joggers and bikers at Hillcrest and Providence hospital cardiac and wellness, centers. They shared the scar war.

            Many wanted to join me in the tattoo solution by giving suggestions for my tattoo, never theirs. We discussed scars, comparing color, shape, quality of line and placement on the body.

     The immediate thoughts for the leg scar tattoos was of course a snake or a flower. I loved the suggestion of a zip­per design or a DNA double helix_. Those showed some imagination and a little humor. Leaving the wellness center, I went to an elementary school and asked the children what they would do, but their answers were mostly programmed by society: plants, animals, standard images or designs.

     My wife had a good idea. She suggested, "Why don't you write an article about it and ask the 100,000 readers to turn in suggestions for tattoos to make scars-from-surgery beautiful?"

     Many people now have leg or body scars from surgery. Heart bypass surgery is common. The worlds of Africa and Oceania are a part of modern life.

     What kind of tattoo would Picasso suggest, or President Clinton, or the pope, or you?

Sporting inner tattoos

To anyone who has lived a full life, to anyone who has truly loved, suffered, survived, been blessed, laughed down to his curled toes, shouted at the whirl­wind, romanced and lost or won, drained the cup of life and smiled broadly. We are all tattoo paint­ings.

They can be used to cover scars of life's experiences

     Recently I wrote about "post-surgical scar en­hancement" — in other words, thinking about getting a tattoo. I got all kinds of suggestions.

     I went to see my friend Bubba Jay the Third, who lives grandly on the road once called Dripping Springs. Bubba had read my request for imaginative ideas about tattoos to cover scars. He was surprised that I came to his house with a folder filled with letters and notes.

     One suggested a map with "the Brazos River, Cameron Park, The Art Center and MCC, the Sus­pension Bridge, Indian Spring Park, Fort Fisher, Baylor, the Dr Pepper Museum, etc. You could be a walking tourism promotion!"

      Several shared the sentiment contained of this one: "If you're not embarrassed to put your article in the paper, you should be grateful to wear your scars."

  One inventive soul wrote: "You have a wealth of life stories that would 'memorialize' your body into a beautiful life history mural."

Name and date

     On a lighter vein, one suggested, "You could squelch people's curiosity about how you got your scars by putting the name/date of the procedure."

     WRS Group, Inc. sent "A Guide to Safety: Tattoos" and "Body Piercing: A Guide to Safety." I learned that tattoos were found on Egyptian mummies. During the 1800s, tattooing was so popular in Europe that even kings and queens got them.

     From Big Fish Tattoos in Belton, I received a long letter on the art of choosing the right tattoo artist ". . . just as in other forms of art, people are drawn to artists and artwork that expresses something of themselves. So should a tattoo. A tattoo should be something that is special to you, since you will be carrying it with you forever."

     A dear friend told me: "My cancer scars are like battle ribbons. I wouldn't consider camouflaging them."

      "So here I am," I said to Bubba. "Help me. I have so much information, so many suggestions my mind is a summer blizzard."

     Bubba Jay positioned himself in his best imitation of Rodin's "The Thinker."

 "Why do all tattoos have to be on the outside?" he smiled. "I have it on the best authority that Michael Jordan and Phil Jackson have more tattoos than Dennis Rodman. They are just on the inside. They are experiential tattoos to cover the scars left by life's experiences."

     "Inside tattoos," I queried? "Where can I go to get one done in brilliant technique?"

 "To anyone who has lived a full life," said Bubba. "To anyone who has truly loved, suffered, survived, been blessed, laughed down to his curled toes, shouted at the whirlwind, romanced and lost or won, drained the cup of life and smiled broadly. We are all tattoo paintings."

     We sat in the setting sun and discussed the inner tattoos of people we knew or wished we did.

     "Forever" tattoos are just as permanent on the inside, but the process is not as terrifying as the decisions of the moment on the outside.

     Bubba described his inner sunset tattoo, where his palette had infinite choice. And I thought to myself, "I have been tattooing for years."