A Satellite Crashes During Re-entry (Kubek)

In the valley of the river that flows a mile or so from my home, a man lies on his left side in a thin patch of riparian woods on an asphalt path, which presses against his ankle, knee, hip, shoulder, forearm, and wrist, as fingers from both hands reach to cover the crown of his head, which throbs like a bell that has been rung but does not sound. This man is clothed in a style that bespeaks his middle age: boxy V-neck shirt with khaki pants, ankle-cut socks, and running shoes that do not run but walk daily, briskly, southbound then northbound on the path through the remnant of floodplain forest. This is me in the epoch of pandemic.

* * *

Two years before the COVID-19 virus began its chokehold on the globe, a dark night of the soul crept into my body once again as a seismic state of mind and mood. Its arrival could have been perceived, like the subtle shifting of light at the end of a day, if I had been paying attention. I had not. For twenty-three years, I worked a job for which I earned respect and accolades, but the job ended suddenly because someone in a higher paygrade mismanaged the finances. When my brother asked how I was holding up, I offered an unrehearsed response that sticks with me today. If reincarnation exists—and it probably does because energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transferred—then I insist this is my last tour of duty. I have submitted my paperwork to central administration. I am not coming back. It’s too hard being human. I’d rather be a moon or a random star.

* * *

In 1985, I turned down an offer to attend college in Oxford, Ohio and became a commuter student at Cleveland State University, because the factory where my father had worked as a shipping clerk for thirty-nine years cut him loose one year before he was eligible to receive his pension. The company claimed it went out of business, but that was not quite accurate. They finagled the situation, retaining some of the payroll and shuttering others like my father who had been reduced to the label of labor.

I stopped going to church. I traveled to and from campus every day. I joined a Buddhist study group. Then my father grabbed me by the throat and threatened, in the name of god, to knock my teeth out, so I stopped meditating in his house, took up walking, and did psychotherapy for many years while working that good job which ended without warning. Eventually, I found my way back to a meditation cushion and Kundalini yoga, where I have been breathing, breathing, breathing and letting myself drift into the stratosphere, where cherubim, seraphim, and all the right answers reside.

* * *

The noise in my head that interrupted my walk in the park was the loudest I had ever experienced, and it took time to realize that something had hit me violently on the crown chakra and knocked me to the blacktop path in the woods. A voice of concern from a young man startled my eyes open, as I watched him lunge to help me up then stop, abruptly, as if remembering the risk of contagion. I stood, thanked him for his kindness, and backed away to protect him and me from the potential of tainted breath, as we both looked-up into the canopy of April leaves, searching for a culprit to explain the hurt in my skull, the blood on my hands, and the embarrassment in this shared moment of vulnerability—and frailty.

* * *

In the kitchen of my home, my wife gently parts my silver-gray hair to examine and clean the large red wound, which, I explain, must be from a chunk of dead branch that timed its fall precisely with the trajectory of my walking meditation then jumped into the sea of foliage and flowers to hide the evidence.

“So random,” I say. “My mind was lost in the beauty of springtime color. Then bam!”

“Perhaps,” she says, “there was a mischievous monkey in a tree.”

This makes me smile, because monkeys to her are spirits to me, and even though my head still throbs, I feel the urge to phone my brother and tell him about these coincidences and synchronicities and confess, for the first time, that my wish to never-ever return to this planet is not the truth. It is a distraction. It is a disguise.

Paul M. Kubek grew up in Cleveland, Ohio in the 1970s and 1980s and came of age during the de-industrialization of the Midwest. His writing often explores the impact of unemployment, underemployment, and the looming threat of poverty upon mental, emotional, and physical health. He is writing a memoir about family life during Cleveland’s fall from industrial might. He resides in the Cleveland area.

Photo by Michele Zychowski.