islands.

I've always been a fan of the John Donne quote, "No man is an Island." In American Gods (read it!), Neil Gaiman disagrees. "No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each others tragedies." Recently, I'm somewhat inclined toward the latter philosophy, though it seems pessimistic, individualist, and ultimately more lonely than the former.