despookery i.

It’s odd that my belief in the afterlife has gotten progressively foggier as the years have cranked past. I used to be a devout believer in the week-a-day agnostic school of thought—generally subscribing to the Church of the Great Unknown Magnet, and its pervasive glories—but as I ebb steadily through my thirties, I find that I’m losing my grip on even that mildly-spicy state of faith. It’s not to say that my hope is waning or that I’m unhappy with the things I see in the everyday… quite the merry fuckin’ contrary, actually… all things said, I feel closer to being a man in full at this point in my life than I ever have before.

Anyway. What I’m trying to get at here—amidst the waxing states of a midlife mind soaking in the shitty burned-rubber stench of our goddamned neighbors and their late-night Somali potluck of what might be stewed diapers and cow-paddy turnovers, based on a blind sniff-test—is this: even as I tick steadily away from the grace of a possibly denominational god, I find myself becoming more and more fascinated by the hokey allure of the paranormal.

Go ahead; I can’t type it with a straight face, and hell if I’ll begrudge anybody happening upon this lost corner of the internet for having a similar reaction.

All done? Excellent.

As I was saying, I’ve started to develop a bush-league fascination with hauntings. In a pop/schlock sense, this is best-realized by laughing through episodes of Ghost Adventures and that damned Animal Planet series with the cats and dogs and domesticated muskrats getting their shit freaked out by alleged “other-planar-ly appartionata.*”

the patron saint of hilariously misguided conviction

This really hit its stride over the arching indulgences of 2K11, which officially marked the first year wherein my wife and I wound up actually making something over minimum wage. Those of us who routinely traverse the blogosphere are well-versed in the tragic yammering of unappreciated academics whose students can’t fathom the glory of their intellect and whose vernacular consists of bullshit deference to the omega art of Murakami and whoever the fuck else college idiots are big on reading these days… so let’s cut that trend (and this sentence) off at the C5 and get this thing rolling on a different note.

Here stands an academic—lecturer and administrator—who works for for-profit institutions, plays headhunter games with his services and whose primary interest is in teaching traditionally undesirable student populations (see: low-income adult learners, including prisoners and veterans) and who loves his goddamned job with the verve and enthusiasm of a flop-street junky. I make a living wage, I get to better the lives of others, and I get to hitch my step all over the country in pursuit of conventions, conferences and presentation possibilities… while wedging random acts of touristy indulgence and other oddities in-between the Russian rye of my potential pursuits.

Yes. Which—coming all the way around on the merry-go-round of my generally apoplectic stream of dribbly consciousness—means the recreational pursuit of spooks.

ACT BREAK – READERS WHO HAPPENED UPON THIS POST DUE TO THE BAITING OF THE POST-TAGS CAN OFFICIALLY SCROLL UPWARD, AND FIND THE ACTUAL ACCOUNT OF OUR ADVENTURES AT MANRESA CASTLE ABOVE.