happy holidays assholes

and so merry merry christmas...and what have you done? have you made your life better? why not? i have. i chased after my biggest dream and conquered it. i earned my wings, joining a long list of people who i admire. charles lindbergh, chuck yeager, richard bach, bob hoover, bud anderson, amelia. we are seperated by time and we are seperated by space, but we all speak the same language, we all chase the same horizons and melt into the same sunsets. its a beautiful feeling, one that i cant believe i am so lucky to feel. i love flying, it is my life.
while another dream is lived out, another dream falls of a cliff and dies a horrific fiery death. with the members of the laura glyda band heading off into different directions, both literally and figuratively, its easy to be angry and bitter, and sad, maybe even a little lonely. ive learned that being bitter about it is stupid, a waste of time and a waste of energy. i cant hate laura, i cant blame dave. they are too good friends, i love them both.
speaking of love, i think ive reached the summit of my heartache. ive topped it, i can look down and see where ive been. i can think about all the lessons i learned on the way up. ive got new ideas about love and what role it plays in life, and what exactly love is. i can sum it up all rather quickly. love is all there is in life. whether its love for your job or your dog, your car, or best of all your wife or husband, its all that matters. love what youre doing, love where you are, love who you are with and love who you are and i promise you happiness. now what is love. love is selflessness. love is devotion, trust, faith, honesty and an absence of fear. with it you can conquer anything.
this next year is when everything happens for me. here we go.....

you are what you eat

tonight was dave's bday. i met up with alissa and headed to dave's crazy condo in the north end. we had reservations at Maggianos for 7:15. we hung out for a bit, drank some wine, caught up on life, headed out. we took the t out of haymarket, only going a few stops to get to the restaurant. dave and alissa sat in front of me on the train, me behind them. we arent on the t for more than a few minutes when this woman sitting across from us looks at dave and alissa:

"you two must be brother and sister."

dave: "uh, why do you say that?"

lady: "its the lips, you both have the same lips. are you two related?"

dave: "definitly not."

as anyone may or may not know, dave and alissa have been romantically involved in the past, so i found this line of questioning rather amusing.

lady: "well, if you arent related, you two are going to marry each other. just you watch."

so now im thinking that maybe this lady is physic is something and we'll look back at this night and say 'hey, remember when the lady on the t predicted that you two would get married? crazy.' she continues:

lady: "how old are you?"

alissa: "today is his birthday!"

lady: "oh thats wonderful, let me see here.....25?"

dave: "nope."

lady: "19?" (because thats the next logical step from 25)

dave: "what? seriously? no! older than 25."

lady: "27?"

dave: "yup, i am 27 years old today."

lady: "oh so young. i have 21 years on you, 21 years."

dave: "wow, thats amazing, you dont look it at all. you must be doing something right." (he wasnt kidding, she looked great for 48)

at this point the lady digs in her bag a little bit, looking for something:

lady: "well ill tell you, its this. do you know what this is?"

she holds up a small little copy of the new testament in front of daves face. dave is the most agnostic person alive so now i am expecting the conversation to completely turn. little did i know.....

dave: "a book. alright, its the new testament."

lady: "thats right, i live it. i eat it."

metaphorically. at least we assume she means metaphorically. she eats the bible, as in, lives it and takes it all in. nope. she opens the book to a random page, tears it out, and shoves it into her mouth the same way you would shove a log into a roaring fireplace. she starts chewing away at it, all the way talking. dave, alissa, and i are completely stunned, shocked, in awe, just speechless that this woman is eating a book. without skipping a beat:

dave: "you are the most interesting person i have ever met in my entire life."

lady: (now speaking while chewing the bible, which we have now deemed the edibible) "well i tell ya, i was reading all these stawies bout these soljis doin this, they be in battle and shootin they guns and everythin and they eat the good book and it saves them. i was in some trouble years ago so i just made up my mind one day and started eating it page at a time."

note that she was in trouble years ago. she is sitting on the t, talking to three complete strangers, eating the bible. USED to have problems. we cant wait to hear exactly what these problems were.

lady: "ya know, as soon i started eatin it it worked, all my prolems went way, it didn work fo da money prolems or anytin but it sure worked for my other big problem. (yes she is still chewing. apparently those christians make some mean paper) see years go, i had some problems, i had no hope, i had nothin to lose, i had an eating disorder, ya know, i was bulimic, throwin up after my meals and all."

eating disorder. she solved her eating disorder by eating the BIBLE. i have now buried my face behind the seat because im laughing too hard, dave is almost crying but trying not to show it because he doesnt want to be insulting. she goes on for another minute or two, gets her page down, explains that she does this everyday and that its helped her. but holy shit, hahahah holy shit...if you eat the bible is the resulting excrement a holy shit? anyway, our stop came up and we ran for the door as soon as it opened. dave was right, this was the most interesting person i have ever met in my life. the woman that ate the bible to solve her eating disorder.

horizons

Sitting watching tv with laura and jake the other night, I had a thought. We were watching the Truman show (jim carrey…no one else that’s famous). At the end he is on a boat and crashes into a wall that is supposed to be the horizon. For a second I was really jealous of him. As a pilot, as someone that loves to fly, you are constantly chasing the horizon eventhough you know youll never catch it, but there is still the dream that one day you do. So there was jim carrey, touching the sky., lucky bastard. My mind of course dribbles into the realm of romantics and I thought to myself, in a self-loathing kind of way, that that is probably where ill find her, on the horizon. But seeing as how I cant get there, im screwed, ill never find that. a piss poor attitude right? And then I thought, well maybe im standing on hers. Maybe she can see me off in the distance, a speck on her horizon. Im there, right where ive always wanted to be. And maybe, just maybe, she knows how to catch up to it. Perhaps it only takes time. We shall see…

took laura glyda and jakers up flying today. it was jakes first time in a little plane, i took laura up years ago at which time she almost got sick. fairly easy day but they both got to feel the controls a little bit, see the world sideways and get a windshield full of the ground. here are some pics:

big life choices number 47

i change with the wind according to LB. she might be right, but this time i think i actually concocted a plan that might work, at least in theory. here are the factors causing such change: i hate my job, i hate my current social/romantical position...thats basically it. i need to elaborate more on the job thing, because its deeper than that.

job: i hate waking up everyday and doing stuff for 9 hours a day that has ZERO relevance to me whatsoever. NONE. youve all seen my rants about this up here in the past, just wanted to remind you all. work has been, up til now a means to an end and i am tired of that set up. so what do you do?

you quit your job and make the ends the means. does that make sense?

not moving to RI, not working at the bank too much longer, working at the horse again, staying in the same place, changing bedrooms, getting my commercial license, working at a flight school, becoming the best aerobatic pilot in the country.

what does this kill? nothing necessarily, just makes some things a little harder.

whatever, im still rocking this year

numero uno

1) Sarah A. (college, almost all of it) Holy shit where do I start with this one. Just to tell you how into her I was, I was convinced without a doubt that I was going to marry this girl. Supermodel looks, great laugh, adventurous, ambitious….and then she moved to NYC. We split a year ago…correction…she split a year ago and I think my head still spins around about it at least once a day, usually around 7:20am. She broke up with me on the premise that a long distance thing wasn’t for her, she wanted to experience NYC and all it had to offer and all this stuff. I found that only a few months later…after being with me for just about 3 years…and keeping in mind why she broke up with me, that she was dating a guy that lived in upstate new york. Boston to new york, 4 hours. New york city to upstate, more than four hours. that hurt, just a little bit.
Of course she would get this spot if for only the last time I saw her. If you ever want to break up with someone, make sure that the last time they see you is as you pull away on a train. Yeah, ouch. More than anything its just about losing a friend, in this case my best friend, the best friend that I had ever wanted, needed yadda yadda yadda. She is my Charlie. Number 1, with a bullet, sarah.

There you have it, porter’s top 5 break ups of all time. If youre on this list I probably don’t hate you, actually I can say for sure that I don’t hate any of you. In some cases its just the opposite.

number 2

2) Laura B (high school, all of it): What would you do if your high school sweetheart was hooking up with your best friend behind your back? You would break up with the girl and never speak to the friend again. That is essentially what I did. I ended up forgiving her and trying to get back together with her years later, and it almost happened, but the fact that it didn’t only adds to her qualifications for this list. She is now back with the ex friend and they’ll probably get married. I am not making this up.

number 3

Abbie K (uhh…couple weeks ago):  now how could someone so new make it to the top 5 already?  Its quite simple.  This is the one that never was.  We jumped the gun a little bit getting into it, which was my mistake.  Seriously though, this girl was/is the complete package, insanely funny and entertaining, beautiful beyond description, brilliant and brilliantly off-color and shameless.  I don’t think ive enjoyed knowing someone as much as her, just knowing her.  We got into it with the momentum of a goddamn freight train and without warning, without any signs along the way or anything, the whole thing derailed.  It would be like walking through the commons on a nice spring day, the ducklings swimming around, eating an ice cream cone, birds chirping, flying a kite and then having the ducks drown, my ice cream falls of the cone, the birds spontaneously combust mid flight, the kite falls and impales a bunch of Chinese school children who were on their way to help the homeless, and then a squirrel shits on my head…and then it rains.  A lot.  Will she read this? I can almost guarantee it.  Will she feel bad?  Probably.  That isn’t my intention at all and she knows it.  I still have a really good feeling about her, and I’m still totally digging it, as is she.  Just stalled on take off, pulled up too hard, too fast.  So I’m circling back around…wait wait wait…ill spare you the lame flying metaphor.  She is cool.  Leave it at that.  Number 3 on the list…abbie lee.

4

4) Jen M (senior year, first few months of college): Jen has cursed me, plain and simple. I had a crush on this girl dating back to 8th grade, she was the ultimate girl, she was cool, she was hot, she was popular…and there was me. Senior year roles around, laura and I had split and jen and I were hanging out all the time. One thing needs to another yadda yadda yadda we are an item. Looking back on it, I could not have asked for anything more. The only thing missing I think was dialogue. Hear me out. There is one thing that has always been missing from every relationship I have ever been in really, meaningful dialogue. You should all know by now that I tend to sway towards the philosophical side of things, to figure out the truth in everything and so forth, its just what I do. No one has ever really satisfied that side of me. Im ranting, back to jen. When youre 17, there is only one thing that matters…getting some. That’s all we did to be honest, to the point where it almost got boring. Given my current state, if the 17 year old me sat down in front of me I would smack him upside the head yell whats wrong with you?! And get on my merry way. I broke up with jen because I saw laura. That’s all it took. She came up to look at NU and I showed her around and that was all I needed. I called jen up that night and did the deed. Back in the day, 8th grade era, the girl was into witchcraft. I swear to god she cursed me that night. The last words she said to me were “this is the biggest mistake of your life.” And I think she meant it. Either way, she cursed my sorry ass. 17 days later I find out my parents are getting divorced. My luck with woman and love turns deadly ever since. Did I break up with her? Yes I did. Did she get her revenge, ten fold. Congratulations jen….youre number 4.

Number 5.

I just finished reading High Fidelity. While the film is already one of my favorites of all time, the book was almost painful in how close to home it hit. Me being a masochist of course, fell in love with it and now list the book as one of my favorites as well. To mark this momentous occasion I have decided to follow Rob down memory lane and list my top 5 worst break ups ever. Get comfortable, and if your name falls on this list, I probably don’t hate you, but shit, you should have guessed anyway.

1) Sarah
2) Laura
3) Abbie
4) Jen
5) Tiffany

For the next few days I will post my thoughts on each one of these so stay tuned. For now, here is number 5.

5) Tiffany S. (8th grade): Did I break up with her? Yes I did. So why the hell does she fall in the top five? Because of what happened afterwards. You’ll find that this is a common theme in almost all of the breakups, it wasn’t necessarily the initial explosion that killed me, but the fallout was murder. So what happened to her you ask? I broke up with her because I realized that after dating her for 8 months, that I really didn’t care about her all that much. She was younger and immature and I didn’t feel like dealing with it, so I ditched. She was devastated, crying, screaming, wailing, the whole nine. I never heard from her again but from a mutual source I did find out that within the next year she had turned into a pothead and had an abortion. I cant say that I was a direct cause of either of those things, but I still blamed myself to some degree. In my arrogant little mind I figure that her first heartbreak was probably too much for her to bare, so she dealt with it in whatever way she could, smokin up, getting laid, getting pregnant. I think she might have been afraid of getting hurt again so she turned into this permeable mush, ready to do whatever was asked of her. back then, what matters to 15 year old guys? gettin some and nothing else. what else is there to do anyway? nothing. i recall thinking that i wasnt getting enough and i may have actually said that to her. i cant remember exactly but if i did....whoops, that was stupid. i barely remember anything else about it, but having that potential of really screwing somewhat up is enough to place her at number 5. welcome to the list.

my favorite post ever.

The last time I had been in this bathroom there was a fly buzzing around the light. Now, a week later, I sit here again, and there is again a fly buzzing around the light. I cant help but wonder if it’s the same fly, that’s he has been beating his body against the mirror for over a week thinking that it’s the way out every single time. I commence shitting and it becomes apparent that this guy has a penchant for shit. His attention diverts from the mirror and the lights and focuses on the smell eminating from the crack between the edge of the toilet seat and my bare ass.
Horror. You don’t see him move for it. You just hear the buzzing of the fly in complete Doppler effect, you have to rely on your sensory radar to determine exactly where the fly is in relation to your ass. You hear him around the mirror and its comforting, then you hear him fade a little bit, the sound is coming from behind the toilet, and then it gets louder. Suddenly you realize what is going on. You have shit, he is a fly, he wants your shit, and what do we say? Always go for the source. Think about a fly crawling around your asshole. Not comforting.
I rolled up the book I was reading (side story, in second grade we had d.e.a.r. time, drop everything and read. I am reading, and definitely dropping.) and was going to use it as a fly swatter. He flew past my bare calves and crumpled pant adorned ankles and I took a swing, missing horribly but causing enough of a wake in the air to fuck up his trajectory. He regains control of himself and keeps right on going. Then I pity him. He can fly, I have to admire him. Not only that but he is trying to get at my shit, I have to pity him for that. I don’t have it in me to swat at him any longer. I resolve to just back up so my ass is now flush against the toilet seat, preventing any entry. I’m safe, and so is my shit.
Speaking of shit, all day today mine was green. I don’t mean slightly tinted, I mean whole hearted luck of the irish green. I could understand if I had been eating broccoli and spinach straight for a week, but no, I haven’t. I went out last night but nothing I ingested was green, no guacamole, no melonballs, not even a goddamn apple martini or anything. I’m sorry, but you could be bleeding profusely from the head, you could be seeing four of everything, you could not be able to breathe, but if you really want to get freaked out and think something is wrong with you, shit green.