Kyul is like my crack-cocaine.
my invevitable demise
I go through the big one in about two days. I've long since got past the hole in my stomach. It's the kidneys that I now worry about.
Moore's Paradox
In essence, the times where you know something is the case, but you don't believe it. Or, in this case, of intuiting something but knowing that it is not the case.
I'm pretty sure within a measure of probability and predictability in what constitiutes knowledge that ghosts do not exist. However, I was convinced there was a ghost in my apartment for maybe two months or so.
I didn't really think there was a ghost in my apartment. I just had this continual sense of foreboding upon entering my apartment that there was a ghost in my apartment.
And Asian ghosts are the worst! The Grudge, The Ring. Those things will just attack you for watching the wrong video tape and won't stop until you're dead. In Amityville Horror it was over as soon as they left the house. In The Grudge, if you walk into that house the ghost will hunt you down!
I make sure my students keep their hair well groomed and cut.
I want to make damn sure none of them are ghosts.
I told my department head about the ghost and she just laughed at me, and then she told my class about it. And they laughed at me.
So I realized I'd have to take matters into my own hands. There's a Catholic Church not far from where I am; I figured I'd buy some salt, get it blessed, and then circle the perimeter of the apartment complex sprinkling the salt on the ground as I walked. I let that solution sit in my mind for only a few seconds; after all, how would I explain to my landlord why I'm circling the apartment with salt?
Again, I figured at this point that I just felt -had an intuition- that there were ghosts about. I didn't actually believe -in an active sense of the word- that there were ghosts around. I just figured that sense my psychology is already hardwired to be superstitious -and since the problem here is of a superstitious nature- I'd do best to find a superstitious solution. Show me the man from Acadianna that doesn't in the back of their mind expect to get eaten by the loup garou, or to encounter a person possesed by spirits, and I'll show you a liar.
The next solution was brooms. In Louisiana I've heard some people put brooms across the threshold to stop witches. I figured if it stops witches it'll stop ghosts. I laid 'em out and felt the foreboding, but also felt a little more relieved I must admit. Then my landlord came by to check on the condition of the wallpaper (they were considering changing my wallpaper) and gave me a stare for the brooms laid out at the threshold of every door. That, as well as me tripping over brooms in the dark, made me abandon that idea.
Eventually I got used to the spooky feeling. And then winter ended, and there was no reason to leave my boiler plugged in. I unplugged it and -low and behold- no spooky feeling.
A few weeks later I read an article on infrasound.
Infrasound is low-frequency, barely-audible/ non audible vibration that, shown experimentally, leads subjects to think there is a supernatural presence within the vicinity.
Hence, from the best of what I can say, there are no ghosts here. Just a paranoid foreigner.
It was nice to go through a method for finding out if there are ghosts here. I like methods. Furthermore, I don't think the sceintific method excludes weird explanations. The reasonable person isn't some kind of Mr. Spock impersonator dismissing everything offhand as highly illogical. I don't want to be Spock; I want to be me. I don't think the reason to apply the scientific method to everyday problems (ghosts are everyday problems) is so we can become robots. The scientific method rocks because it rewards dilligence and honesty. I don't think that science, mathematics, and philosophy are awesome because of some kind of fetish for rationality, but rather because of a fetish for accountability. I think it is important to always be painfully aware of what you don't know - and also aware of all the silly quirks that might make your intuitions work one way over another.The point is an admittance that reality is more than the sum of one's personal intuitions or pet theories. Integrity shouldn't be about suppressing feelings and intuitions that may seem odd or irrational; rather, integrity should be about measuring your feelings and intuitions against the unforgiving yardstick that is reality.
In this case my intuitions did not measure up to reality. Fortunately for me (could you imagine the inconvienance of having to move because your apartment is haunted; and those Asian ghosts follow you, too) there are no ghosts at Dongborex Apartments.
fantastic!
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