N. D. Wolfwood

I'll be gone for the next two days, if anyone cares. Can't get to work and being sans net access at home...>shrug<
I've got a thumper of a headache. This isn't surprising considering that I've been up for...>counts< 39 hours now. I'm stressed just about to the hilt about the car thing--not that I won't get one, but just trying to juggle the logistics of getting around. It's a headache.
Right. More later maybe.

So...about the car. In case anyone cares. Warning: profanity ensues to make Joe Pesci cringe. Reader beware.

I found the car in the paper, called the guy, he said it was good, low oil pressure but otherwise runs like a top, he says. I call his mechanic, who says he remembers the car, it's good, and subies will run indefinitely with low oil pressure.
So I'm up all evening, all night, all morning. Walk to his place at nine and waited 2 hours in the snow for the guy to show.
Finally, drove the car and he kept talking...always fucking talking a mile a damn minute, but it seemed okay. Rough as fuck, but okay.
He said he was firm at $400 but I got him to $375, called Mom, asked her to jog over and float me a loan in the afternoon, and staggered home, limping on the bum knee, and took a nap.
Mom came, she drove it, we took it back the the mechanic who had serviced it before and said it was pretty okay, and he took one look under the hood and said, "Shit, this is new. The bearings are going out, that's why the oil pressure's low. I wouldn't buy it, not even for $300. It's about to die."
So we took it back and he was all condescending and shit--something about "you shouldn't have made a deal if it depended on someone else's okay"--well, it fucking didn't depend on my mom's okay, it's my fucking money. But you, fucker, why were you talking like you wanted to cover up that death rattle? Mom told him that the bearings were going out--verbatim from the mechanic--and he says, "I wouldn't count on that. It could be anything making that low oil pressure." I wanted to fuckin hit him but I'm too damn tired. Someone once said the definition of an asshole is someone who doesn't believe what he's seeing, and this guy fits the bill.
So we went back to the mechanic who has a bunch of subarus and he's got one, ugly as fuck, sort of mustard colored but faded on the outside, and a light brown interior--not khaloshes but not pretty either, not that I really give a shit for cosmetics--for $750. Gotta put a new engine in it because the dumb bitch that owned it ran the engine dry, no oil at all.
He's gonna check the CVs and ball joints and put in a new engine, then drill the bushings and tighten up the stick some because they get real loose--not a problem but sometimes drives you bugfuck because you can't tell which gear you're in by looking because the stick just hangs like it's in neutral. It should be ready thursday.
so that's a week I've gotta come up with some fuckin way to work and crash out until six every morning or entertain myself here, fuckin near a week of twelve-hours-a-day-at-work, only six of those paid of course, and i'll have it just in time for my week of vacation. >sigh< I'm glad to get a car. But shitaree.

Shite.
Depression sucks. I've been depressed for several years now, and it's getting better. But there's still a big part of me that really suffers with it. I'm not suicidal all the time. I no longer do stupid things in a half-assed attempt to kill myself (the most notable one of those was trying to cross--in bare feet--a floodstage Bitterroot River one spring with a sinew-backed bow in hand. This meant I could not swim across because the hide glue on the bow would dissolve and wreck it. I didn't realize until later that a part of me didn't really want to get across. But that's neither here nor there). I don't burn myself or cut myself or do drugs. I've nearly stopped drinking. I am doing remarkably well, for a depressive, I think. All the same, there are days--a lot of them--that make me think suicide would be a good idea. Would I kill myself? Probably not. I just want to quit hurting and feeling pursued. I am a hunter by nature--of animals, mostly, although the hunter-nature carries over into a sort of predatory style with people and ideas too--and hunters never like feeling like prey. I suppose NO one likes feeling like prey, anyway, but it's worse for hunters.

Allow me to digress on the subject of hunting, as I have thought about this often.

If you hunt long enough--animals, I mean--you start to get the same technique for people. If you're single, you see a man at the bar, and he is like an elk. With an elk, it's easier, though. First the big stuff--is it the right sex, the right species. Then the necessary qualities--big enough and meaty enough to use your tag on? Fat enough that it will be tasty? And then aesthetics. Good fur, if it's a summer critter and you need an elk robe. Antlers if you're looking for handles and scrapers. The small things. Same with a person.
You size him up, roughly at first, and then if you like what you see, you fine-tune it. First it's the "is he good looking?" and if he is, then maybe you stalk a little closer. Still good looking? Run down the checklist...nice bone structure? Good wrists and collarbones? Aesthetically appealing nose? How about hair and eyes? Then the more fine-tuned things. How does he treat the people he's with? What's he drinking? Are his clothes clean? Are his shoes deformed from limping due to permanent injury? You listen to the accent. Where's he from, is he educated...Down the list. Hunting.

And people somehow find this unsettling, if they know you're hunting.

Maybe I get a predatory look in my eye, or something, who knows. But I'd rather be sized up at a distance then have some drunk yokel stagger up to me and ask for my phone number when he obviously doesn't know the first thing about me. Call me crazy.

So. I don't like to feel hunted, not in the world-way, where people are after me for money and whatnot. It bothers me very deeply, probably more than anything else. I am most like a cat, I guess, with the underlying ideology something like "Leave me the fuck alone; I'll come outside when I'm ready and not a moment before, do my thing, and be back before it gets light."
This hunter mentality carries over to religion, too.
I'm a Nazarene Jew, I guess. That's closest. And although I feel haShem's presence and I am fairly observant, once again, the cat ideology. I seldom pray. Even when I'm in trouble. Not until I'm about ready to shoot myself do I ask for any help. It's not pride so much as a feeling that asking for help is weakness, and I have to prove my strength (over and over, yet), and also that it's somehow bothersome to Him.
As if he's not omnipotent or something, and it's a problem for Him. Weird? Absolutely.
So here I am feeling like a hunted animal, suicidal half the time, and I feel BAD about praying because it might cause Him some inconvenience. Then, of course, I berate myself for my belligerence and stupidity--and no, that's not the depression talking, because it IS stupid to think that He would be in any way bothered by a plea for help. Honestly, I do believe people--all of us--are special to Him and that He loves us.
>ponders< >smokes<
So why do I feel this way?
For some reason I have a tremendous capacity for self-doubt, self-loathing, and guilt. Call me Capricornian. Call me Nick Wolfwood. I'm the one trying to do the whole "be holy" thing and I end up with blood on my hands and a bottle of booze, and that's about all I can do.

And you know, I'm still dragging this fucking cross around.

So. I'm going to try to force myself to write. Despite the allure of my fountain pen, I never could get into the swing of writing morning pages every day, longhand. So, since I'm hunched at this damn box every day anyway, maybe I can do it here.
>smokes<
Right. So I bought a car today. Spent almost a week among the Great Unhorsed, and that's just not possible when you live in a state where it's not unusual to get eight inches of snow in May. A twelve-ile round trip walk to work is crippling when you have arthritis in the knees, and anyway four hours is a hell of a commute. So I have to have a car, despite the fact that I don't particularly like them.
So I bought a Subaru. If I have to have a car, it should be a Subaru. The older the better. Good for moving stuff in, and since I am sufficiently restless enough that I move about three times a year that a good moving car is necessary. As much as I dug the Grand Am, it wasn't...right. There are cars that are right for people and then there are cars that people drive of necessity. I am a pure-D hatchback wagon rusted out rolling POS type of person, no two ways about it. I would feel wrong in a nice car, and I always did feel weird in a sedan. I never even NAMED the Grand Am, and I had it an entire year. It never spoke to me. "Legato" seemed as good a name as any--loyal but strange, and monotone--so I sort of started to call it that about a week before it gave up the ghost. Cars should speak to you. Cars have some sort of spirit. That menacing feeling you get when you're in a junkyard? That's the spirits of cars, some nasty from the time they roll off the line and some disappointed that they've been dumped. Some, I suppose, are just quietly resting in their Detroit necropolae; but I still feel like I'm being glared at every time I go into a junkyard. I don't want to feel glared at when I look at my car. I want to know that the car likes me and won't be...malicious. It will need a name, this Subaru. Something flashy and in high style.

The big thing about this car (religious musings ensue) is that haShem provided it to me. I drove myself bonkers thinking I had to do something, but ultimately it works out because He makes it work out. This seems strange to me. I am the Fox Mulder, Trust No One type. I have to take care of everything myself. So it's strange to me that He has my back (how's that for Jewish gangsta?) and takes care of things. I do things; what I can't do, He does. If I'm hunted, I know that I can take care of some things and He does the rest. This is comforting, but I've never felt like anyone's had my back before, ever. This will take getting used to.
So, as irreligious as this sounds, mad props to my Peeps. I couldn't do it without You.