Lisa & Nicholas

Lisa fingers went nervously unescorted, and guided a cigarette to her lips before an American Airlines gate attendant stop her. She quickly removed it. Sat back in her chair, and suddenly remembered she was in an airport. The huge 737’s; just in front of her; a young child screaming at the top of his lungs, and many others, feigning interest in newspapers, all should’ve kept her alerted to that fact.
Her boyfriend Christopher returned with a McDonald’s coffee, and folded newspaper. He squeezed past a suitcase, and dropped down next to her.
“Shit!” He forced, spilling a little of the hot liquid on his hand.
He shook it towards the floor and was offered a napkin from a woman across from them, reaching for it, he nodded his appreciation, and pressed it to his hand.
“You OK?” Lisa asked finding concern, and etching it across her face. She even sat up trying to emphasize this interest even more. But she found herself empty, done, all out.
“I’m OK.” He mumbled focusing on his paper. He took a sip, and settled back into the vinyl seat.

It was fitting that they were at an Airport. He was on his way to California for better job opportunities, and this was turning into an unofficial good riddance.
Just her being there, was just habit for both of them–than anything else. She was sure of this, and he was as well.
They known it each other since high school and dated for 5 years, and it started to feel just like it was based on proximity, nostalgia and their families need for them to be together—well mostly his--rather than anything substantial.
She tightened and un-tightened her legs, staring down at her knees that her summer cotton dress revealed. She traced a thin scar that ran across the top of one of them and she searched for a sad emotion and found one in her age.
She remembered receiving it as a kid after climbing a neighbors metal linked fence. The years had raised it just like her mother said it would after she failed to tell her so she could have it stiched. It drew her concentration. The harder it was for her to recall the incident the more she felt her market value plummeting.

At 32 Lisa wasn’t married or had any children. She wanted all of this on certain days of the week, and today was one of them; to hold and hug and comfort her. Christopher might have been the one, just because he knew her favorite drink, movie and where the tightness in her neck was. Small requirements, but for two people who haven’t discovered higher preferences, it was big; it was huge.
His expired job and gold out west, was God, for these two heredity victims who at the time couldn’t discover their purpose through they’re on volition.
She then easily clouded her mind with all his negativity’s to prepare her for his absence: his lateness, his inability to say, “I love you.” Even though she found herself struggling to truly mean it herself. She concentrated for more and saw his sisters brooding face coming into her mind, as they called his row number. They poured empty sentences of seeing each other again. Long drawn out sentences that were dotted with huge pauses, then they hugged. A dry kiss followed and then he disappeared through the long jet way towards the plane. She receded from its entrance as it was eventually shut and watched the plane push back and set off for the runway.
She stood a little longer and then slowly walked through the terminal, past a cache of eateries and out the sliding doors into the sunshine.

Arriving home, she dropped her keys next to living room phone, and avoided the tempting blinking light, and headed upstairs to run a bath.
She click number 12 on her CD player and BJORK’S kettle drum voice pour out of her bedroom CD player, as she now stretched out and stared at the filmy water around her. ‘You gardener you discipliner domesticly I can obey all of your rules and still be me…I never thought I would compromise.’ She caught the words and sung along, as her arm cupped the rimmed of the tub and she sighed before sliding further back till her neck was submerged.
“You’re not going to keep it together?”
“No.”
“You say that now.” Her mother chirped through the phone.
Still moist and standing in the kitchen, she peeled lemons and dropped them into a blender. Her mother went on as usual, using her 35-year marriage as an example of what a relationship should be. She put her mother’s words on mute in her mind and rested her finger on the blender’s power button.
Her parents were the greatest bad example for her, from her perspective they were seized together by nothing other than those years. They gathered them like tickets at a state fair and continued to announce this at family gatherings like it alone was the key to a successful marriage. Her mother clearly forgot–that growing up, her bedroom was twenty feet from theirs. It was where she sat on the inside, witnessing the corroded parts of their union. There were happy times, but they were always hidden behind a house full of people or at times alone with one of them–as they presented themselves like candidates, with heavily filled inconsistent philosophies to win her affection.
She stared down at her stomach; ran her thumb underneath the waistband of her underwear, waiting for a bridge in the words, so she could end the call. The bridge arrived at a familiar junction and Lisa blended her lemons and sat quietly in the living room.
She saw Christopher’s Detroit Tigers, T-shirt squeezed between the cushions and ran her fingers through a hole underneath its collar.
She saw his pensive stare when she would play her music to loud. She stared at a frayed armchair and heard his clicking fingers across his brand new wireless laptop, as she smoked and watched television. This is what she considered the good times. She didn’t know she could live her life in any other way.


Sitting on the green felt covered sofa in the house her grandmother left her and found
tears pushing there way out. She didn’t find one image they stemmed from, so they came from a bunch of them within her last few years.
Her grandmother wasn’t done with her before she died, there was still more of her truth to present to her. She felt incomplete. It was as if she started a book and stopped before she finishes the last closing chapters and she was left without her tether. More tears came as she saw her smiling in front of her. There were many times she sat across from her–in a now orange kitchen, listening to her laugh, joke, deliver wonderful meals–like she had missed her calling, and more importantly relocate complacent family ideals, with metaphoric genius. She took politically correct behavior and twisted it like a balloon at a kid’s party. Carefully she revealed this unconventional way; this Zen way as to make sure Lisa was ready to be unplugged. She would cushion the sofa of life and send her back out there to dig in as if she was some guru in a satin dress.

ZEN CALENDAR

It is important to see that the main point of any spiritual practice is to step out of the bureaucracy of the ego. This means stepping out of the ego's constant desire for a higher, more spiritual, more transcendental version of knowledge, religion, virtue, judgment, comfort or whatever it is that the particular ego is seeking.


Chogyam Trungpa

Process

Life is about the process--that is where the lessons are, not the result, 99% of our time is in a process.
A women's pregnacy is generally nine months of process the result of course is beautiful, but that moment is eventually lost to another process.
If we focus on addressing our mindset just towards the process in our life, it will dramatically improve; our results will be grandeur and blend into the flow of life allowing a constant.
If we focus on just the result we will be left empty, because results are always quick and they eventually disappear.