Acknowledgments

My friend Gerry Downey and I share many things. Among which is the ambition to be writers. But being impractical philosophers, and hopeless procrastinators, neither of us makes much headway in this regard. But to stay in practice we send each other our writings, from time to time. We then prod and shame each other into greater efforts. In this way, Gerry is a source of motivation and encouragement for me. But also in a deeper way.

Gerry is a poet, a philosopher, a college professor, a pol, an attorney and, above all, a humorist. A jester of all trades. His humor is the tangy wisdom of a hip Buddha--cagey and knowing, delightful in its sting. He has a gesture which is so in character it very nearly defines a personality in a movement. He will toss out some dazzling gem of wit, bright and precise and potentially cutting in its sharpness of edge, and then feint backwards, shy-sly, with an innocent smile, his body offering to take back his words if they offend, or the cut is too deep.

From time to time Gerry shares with me from the cache of his unpublished writings, and often shares with me from the cache of his wisdom. Gerry's charm and wit and wisdom have inspired me time and again to write, and to think of writing as an honorable art. I owe a great deal by way of inspiration to my friend Gerry Downey.

I also owe a great deal in a deep and diffuse way to that fellow with the full gray beard in the Chemistry Laboratory who first rang my gong and who alerted me to the fact that there are indeed more things under heaven and earth than I had dreamed. And to Swami Chetanananda, who continues to ring my gong on a regular basis.

The ancient Greeks invented the myth of the Muses to explain the wellspring of creativity. They sensed that there is often more to a creative act than the willful intent of the creator. There was perhaps more insight than myth in this myth. My own experience of the art of writing is that it often contains this quality of communing with a source of inspiration, a source somehow outside of my own internal mental machinery. I feel almost like a plagiarist, then, when I take solitary credit for my scribblings. And so, finally, I thank my Muses--whoever, whatever and wherever they may be.

Y Mi Vida, ella traer paz y estabilidad por mi vida, y fuera esta fundacionesta libro no apareccer.