Last fall, aside from my usual
activities and preoccupations related to my teaching two classes of political
philosophy – one in ancient philosophy and the other in modern philosophy - I
began writing the third volume of the Altamaha Trilogy, In the Widening Gyre.
As December came around, I decided that I was moving too fast into the third
novel and needed some time for reflection, and for this reason, pulled back
from writing. Alas, when I become emerged down into a certain depth, there is
no coming up until I’m finished and I realized that I wasn’t ready for that
just yet. In January and February I spent time writing a lecture for an
upcoming conference in late February and early March and doing some research on
Sicily which I, along with my wife, Kay, had planned to visit for a week in
conjunction with the conference.
The conference was sponsored by
the International Association for the Liberal Arts and it was held in Valetta,
the capitol city of the island state of Malta. My lecture was on what I have
called elsewhere and in many instances, the ‘technological metaphor’, and is
related to and therefore a part of my ‘Theory of Spiritual Crisis’ that I have
been developing for years, and which informs all that I teach and write,
including my fiction. Times of spiritual crisis result in an eclipse of both
meaning and purpose, issuing in a non-time of lost consciousness, by which is
meant not ‘un-consciousness’, but literally a consciousness that has lost its
way – and thus, a disoriented consciousness.
The Malta conference was an
altogether new experience, as academic conferences go, and thus, a whole
experience that was, well, a bit ‘quirky’, if I may use a rather archaic
adjective that I like. The first thing of note was that because the conference
was held in off-season it took place in a five star hotel at three star
rates, quite different from staying in university dorm rooms or in ho-hum
hotel rooms. My wife and I had a luxurious room with an ample balcony
overlooking the beautiful harbor of Valetta with the most deep inky blue water
that I ever recall seeing.
