1. Preface
2. The Hero's Journey
3. The catalysis of the Hero's Journey
4. Finger Lakes Splendour
5. Millard Fillmore's Burden
6. Glitter
7. Gravity
8. Doctor Heidegger's Experiment
9. Young Goodman Brown
10. Ultimate astronomical resolution
11. Bucknum Genealogy from Trenton
12. A Dualistic Cosmogony
13. Conclusion
14. The Biographical Compendia: a critical analysis
15. Topology of Polyhedra. Tessellations & Networks
16. Discovery of Spiro Quantum Chemistry
17. Chemical Topology & Chemical Graph Theory
18. Creativity and IQ
19. Windows & The Dark Side
20. Spiroaromaticity
21. Balaban
22. A non-linear force law
23. Doolittle
24. Van Hart

This book is intended as a popular presentation of certain scientific, philosophical, social and personal essays that the author has recorded in Oceanside-Carlsbad, California in the years 2005-2008.

1. RAMANUJAN VISIONARY & POLYMATH

In retrospect, from a current period of seeming stability, I can see that my life up to about 30 was relatively calm and uneventful with steady progress being made in research and development................I was headed for a postdoc at this stage in geochemistry and maybe a career at a 4 year college. I was happy, then, to be a drinker and a Finger Lakes romancer.Then, overnight, at 30 things changed (a so-called phase transition occurred) into a nightmare that would last until 37, at least, when some light was seen at the end of a tunnel finally. This period from 30 to 37 was dictated by chaos at every turn, where I thought I might end up homeless in the end and I was hospitalized some 10 times for mental illness. It was in the midst of this black period that I questioned every thing I had done in my life, and asked God for guidance and some sort of sign of benevolence; why had I not taken that career in Columbus, OH at Chemical Abstracts Service and married at 25, after all. This was the time when I was employed as a delivery driver in Ithaca, NY, and I would drive around every night, on deliveries elsewhere, and slam pints of Foster's, and conciously ask God for help and guidance.Then abruptly things changed for the better (as another phase transition hit us) virtually overnight, as 36 turned to 37 for me in the cold Ithaca, NY springtime weather. From 37 to the present 45 years of age, I transformed from a black period that preceded this, gradually, to a white period fertile with ideas and creativity. I have become quite expressive and creative in this time, and I have learned to do theory with little more than a pencil and paper and molecular model kits and a calculator.......................plus a lot of help from friends doing sophisticated calculations for me in China, England, Argentina, Romania, Germany etc. and the USA as well. I can tell now that this white period may slow somewhat at times, going into various shades of gray, but that it will probably never end in my lifetime. I will always be creative. The current period from 37 on is one of relative stability in which I have become the Lord of my Being.This scenario of a relative local stability (for me a false stability before 30), followed by a period of chaos (from 30 to about 37 in my lifetime), and then a time of global stability later on (after age 37), dictated by some success and creative expression, is an archetype of mankind's existence celebrated as the hero's journey in cultures around the world. All of this analysis of such an archetypal journey of the human spirit, has been described by J. Campbell in his book called, The Hero with a 1000 Faces. During the chaotic period the hero confronts his demons and attempts to overcome them in their nefarious stride. And then the hero returns from the frontier of human existence (verge of homelessness, in my situation) and reports on the conflicts he has encountered and the demon's he has conquered using a form of creative expression (mathematical chemistry for myself) that is uniquely his.

Everyone thus has their own hero's journey to follow in life, and their own demons to conquer. I don't need to ask my mentors about this, for it would probably be inappropriate. I trust you, for it is my belief that, whomever you are, that you saved my life in essence, and at key instances, along with operatives from the U.S.A. government, you delivered me to this true, white period of relative calm and global stability in which I have been able to be creative.................And in which I have expressed myself so as to be the Lord of my Being. I urge you however to see the excellent screenplay called, The Man Who Would Be King with Michael Caine & Sean Connery, to see if there are not some ridiculous parallels to a "king, who forecast a con............." and my own livelihood from 1993-2008, in which I delivered myself from a decidedly black period, with some degree of grace and forethought. Although I certainly had no intention for this to happen so gracefully, it looks like the whole thing was indeed rigged, to exquisite perfection. And remarkably, there is abundant gold & treasures of Alexander the Great waiting for me in Ithaca or elsewhere................And we tried..........And it was thus up to myself to create this treasure out of my own essence. And so it is...............