Beyond The Ordinary

Several years after inventing The Game, I thought of a set of books to contain the material I had so far gathered. These books would all be written by me and would be for entertainment as well as education. Books by other authors would be integrated into my core material. The first of my book ideas was the story of a man driven by grief and guilt to construct an 'impossible'  machine that would allow him to be reunited with his dead lover. The second book I thought of was a Stephen King/Roald Dahl type novel involving a young boy's determination to find and destroy a female supernatural urban legend called The Winter Spider that is claimed to be a multiple murderer of children.

Beyond The Ordinary

With mention of Winter and the line ' I am a rock. I am an...'

Beyond The Ordinary

The Cover Of A Book Some Man Never Wrote

Beyond The Ordinary

'No man is an island' is a famous phrase expressing the idea that human beings are fundamentally interconnected and cannot thrive in total isolation. It was originally written by the English poet and cleric John Donne in his 1624 prose work, Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (specifically within Meditation XVII). Donne composed this piece while recovering from a life-threatening illness, during which he heard church bells tolling for funerals and reflected on human mortality.

Though often formatted as a poem today, the text was written as a prose meditation.

The passage, found in John Donne's 1624 Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions (Meditation XVII), famously argues that individuals are not isolated entities but are connected to a larger whole. It uses metaphors of land to emphasise that every person's life and death affects humanity, suggesting that one should not ask for whom the bell tolls, as it tolls for everyone.

While Donne didn't write a book titled 'No Man is an Island', there are several published anthologies of his prose that borrow the famous line as their title, such as Rivers Scott's collection. (There is also a well-known 1955 book of the same name by monk Thomas Merton, but it is unrelated to Donne's writings.)

Beyond The Ordinary

Note the last 3 lines

Beyond The Ordinary

The Winter Spider/Arachne. This legend is known by many other names.

The Winter Spider

Beyond The Ordinary

2nd Look

Beyond The Ordinary

MaCrew 1+2+2. Maybe, there's something in the box - like Thing. If so, you could, perhaps, have It male or female for 1+2+3.

Beyond The Ordinary

In the 1989 cult-classic Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure, Socrates (famously mispronounced by the boys as So-crates) is an ancient Greek philosopher who is recruited through time to help Bill and Ted pass their history presentation.

Beyond The Ordinary