Fishing in Beirut

Frank began to tremble. He had been practising continuously for two and a half weeks, and every time he did it, he felt a little more. Shaking, warmth, expansion. He lay inert on his bed, fearless of this stillness where before it was too much. His feelings danced within him.
The physical sensations of his body were numerous and strange. They were everchanging. He felt lumps, gurgles, wires and spheres and spikes, all within the housing of his skin. His mind flashed random pictures.
Sometimes this healing lasted merely thirty seconds, others it stretched out to fifteen minutes or longer. He smiled or cried or both, a world within his chest. Pictures came of the accident, but also of Monica, of Lise, of half-remembered moments from his childhood long ago. He observed what he was feeling.
Afterwards he would rest or sleep. He went walking in the evenings. There was a bridge which led over the Boulevard Peripherique, from Porte de Vanves to the sleepy town of Malakoff, and he stood there as the sun set, watching transfixed. Gold and pink and purple.
He developed a taste for weird cheeses. They were a luxury, and he didn’t beat himself up for wanting them. He just ate freely. They held a mixture of a bitter sting, which was maybe the first taste encountered, and a pleasing sweetness. They were all different colours.
On the bridge he stood or wandered. He passed through neighbourhoods. There was that deeply stirring Parisian light, the peaceful sensation of the summer, the evening. Day’s end. Malakoff was not Paris, it was more a town that could have been anywhere, and the parts of the city it bordered weren’t so bustling or strong. Sometimes he sat down on benches.
In the mirror in the mornings, it almost looked like his muscles were growing stronger. This couldn’t really be, or maybe it could. He would stand straight before himself, taking in this body which now felt like his own. It was stronger, warmer.
Showers were sensual dreams. Falling water hit his being, and he could direct his consciousness to focus on just a shoulder, or a leg. It could be all in that one moment. When sitting he would settle on his sleeves against his wrists, or his collar on his neck. Numerous sensations would follow. Frank was enchanted by the power that he held, the same energy that had caused anxiety, now rendering him fresh and new.
He kept practising. He sensed into himself constantly, remembering to do it again and again regardless of activity or location. Soon it was how he lived, with him always. He walked and felt his muscles, sat and followed his breath. Drinking, he was the liquid. Sunsets were not sunsets, but the only event in the stationary world. The same for the wind or a car horn.
He took that Spanish poem from his pocket and threw it away. It floated down peacefully over the Boulevard Peripherique. The wind caught it and didn’t, and it glided easily for spells, before being fluttered, or whipped, or re-directed. Finally it attached to a speeding bumper. Frank began to cry, there on that bridge in that city, and distant company neon signs blurred in his watery gaze. Banks or building societies.
He kept walking, breathing. Breaths became fuller as energy dispersed. Light was clearer, sounds were sharper, thoughts were strangely optimistic. What was broken only blooms in midnight.