Blend In Or Stand Out Quotes

You can't blend in when you were born to stand out.

Sometimes you need to stand out in order to blend in.

I am, and always have been - first, last, and always - a child of America. You raised me. I grew up in the pastures and hills of Texas, but I had been to thirty-four states before I learned how to drive. When I caught the stomach flu in the fifth grade, my mother sent a note to school written on the back of a holiday memo from Vice President Biden. Sorry, sir—we were in a rush, and it was the only paper she had on hand. I spoke to you for the first time when I was eighteen, on the stage of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, when I introduced my mother as the nominee for president. You cheered for me. I was young and full of hope, and you let me embody the American dream: that a boy who grew up speaking two languages, whose family was blended and beautiful and enduring, could make a home for himself in the White House. You pinned the flag to my lapel and said, “We’re rooting for you.” As I stand before you today, my hope is that I have not let you down. Years ago, I met a prince. And though I didn’t realize it at the time, his country had raised him too. The truth is, Henry and I have been together since the beginning of this year. The truth is, as many of you have read, we have both struggled every day with what this means for our families, our countries, and our futures. The truth is, we have both had to make compromises that cost us sleep at night in order to afford us enough time to share our relationship with the world on our own terms. We were not afforded that liberty. But the truth is, also, simply this: love is indomitable. America has always believed this. And so, I am not ashamed to stand here today where presidents have stood and say that I love him, the same as Jack loved Jackie, the same as Lyndon loved Lady Bird. Every person who bears a legacy makes the choice of a partner with whom they will share it, whom the American people will “hold beside them in hearts and memories and history books. America: He is my choice. Like countless other Americans, I was afraid to say this out loud because of what the consequences might be. To you, specifically, I say: I see you. I am one of you. As long as I have a place in this White House, so will you. I am the First Son of the United States, and I’m bisexual. History will remember us. If I can ask only one thing of the American people, it’s this: Please, do not let my actions influence your decision in November. The decision you will make this year is so much bigger than anything I could ever say or do, and it will determine the fate of this country for years to come. My mother, your president, is the warrior and the champion that each and every American deserves for four more years of growth, progress, and prosperity. Please, don’t let my actions send us backward. I ask the media not to focus on me or on Henry, but on the campaign, on policy, on the lives and livelihoods of millions of Americans at stake in this election. And finally, I hope America will remember that I am still the son you raised. My blood still runs from Lometa, Texas, and San Diego, California, and Mexico City. I still remember the sound of your voices from that stage in Philadelphia. I wake up every morning thinking of your hometowns, of the families I’ve met at rallies in Idaho and Oregon and South Carolina. I have never hoped to be anything other than what I was to you then, and what I am to you now—the First Son, yours in actions and words. And I hope when Inauguration Day comes again in January, I will continue to be.

Your true power is not in your difference, but in your consistency of being different. The world will always adjust to consistency, yet struggle with change.

MY PEACE is like a shaft of golden Light shining on you continuously. During days of bright sunshine, it may blend in with your surroundings. On darker days, My Peace stands out in sharp contrast to your circumstances. See times of darkness as opportunities for My Light to shine in transcendent splendor.

Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.

I may not be "blending in"- but if I'm standing out, at least I feel like I've found a place to stand.

Standing out in a crowd is much more rewarding than blending in.

When you already feel like everything about you makes you stand out, it just makes more sense to find as many ways to blend in as you can.

When did you start here?” I ask her. “Three days ago. Sir. Aspirant. Um—” She wrings her hands. “Veturius is fine.” She walks carefully, gingerly—the Commandant must have whipped her recently. And yet she doesn't hunch or shuffle like the others slaves. The straight-backed grace with which she moves tells her story better than words. She'd been a freewoman before this—I'd bet my scims on it. And she has no idea how pretty she is—or what kind of problems her beauty will cause for her at a place like Blackcliff. The wind pulls at her hair again, and I catch her scent—like fruit and sugar. “Can I give you some advice?” Her head flies up like a scared animal's. At least she's wary. “Right now you...” Will grab the attention of every male in a square mile. “Stand out,” I finish. “It's hot, but you should wear a hood or a cloak—something to help you blend in.” She nods, but her eyes are suspicious. She wraps her arms around herself and drops back a little. I don't speak to her again.

Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible. In

Wallace was just the sort who blends into the background of the school photo (or the greeting line at the cotillion) but who, with the passage of time, increasingly stands out against the lapses in character around him.

Let me make a clean breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I- being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude- how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whaleships' standing orders, "Keep your weather eye open, and sing out every time." And let me in this place movingly admonish you, ye ship-owners of Nantucket! Beware of enlisting in your vigilant fisheries any lad with lean brow and hollow eye; given to unseasonable meditativeness...: your whales must be seen before they can be killed; and this sunken-eyed young Platonist will tow you ten wakes round the world, and never make you one pint of sperm the richer. Nor are these monitions at all unneeded. For nowadays, the whale-fishery furnishes an asylum for many romantic, melancholy, and absent-minded young men, disgusted with the corking care of earth, and seeking sentiment in tar and blubber. Childe Harold not unfrequently perches himself upon the mast-head of some luckless disappointed whale-ship, and in moody phrase ejaculates:- "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean, roll! Ten thousand blubber-hunters sweep over thee in vain. " ... "Why, thou monkey," said a harpooneer to one of these lads, "we've been cruising now hard upon three years, and thou hast not raised a whale yet. Whales are scarce as hen's teeth whenever thou art up here." Perhaps they were; or perhaps there might have been shoals of them in the far horizon; but lulled into such an opium-like listlessness of vacant, unconscious reverie is this absent-minded youth by the blending cadence of waves with thoughts, that at last he loses his identity; takes the mystic ocean at his feet for the visible image of that deep, blue, bottomless soul, pervading mankind and nature; and every strange, half-seen, gliding, beautiful thing that eludes him; every dimly-discovered, uprising fin of some undiscernible form, seems to him the embodiment of those elusive thoughts that only people the soul by continually flitting through it. In this enchanted mood, thy spirit ebbs away to whence it came; becomes diffused through time and space; like Crammer's sprinkled Pantheistic ashes, forming at last a part of every shore the round globe over. There is no life in thee, now, except that rocking life imparted by a gentle rolling ship; by her, borrowed from the sea; by the sea, from the inscrutable tides of God. But while this sleep, this dream is on ye, move your foot or hand an inch; slip your hold at all; and your identity comes back in horror. Over Descartian vortices you hover. And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists!

How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia's mother and father, because of her mother's and father's mothers and fathers. Because long ago, her mother had gone missing, and her father had brought her home. Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.

When the full-grown poet came, Out spake pleased Nature (the round impassive globe, with all its shows of day and night,) saying, He is mine; But out spake too the Soul of man, proud, jealous and unreconciled, Nay, he is mine alone; — Then the full-grown poet stood between the two, and took each by the hand; And to-day and ever so stands, as blender, uniter, tightly holding hands, Which he will never release until he reconciles the two, And wholly and joyously blends them.

You have to wait for good things to happen—wait and wait and work so hard—but bad things occur out of the blue, like fire alarms triggered in the dead of night, blaring randomly, a shock of sound, a chatter of current from which there is no turning back. There's only the day that starts like any other, and when it ends, it leaves you shaken, wobbly, unsure of where you stand, the patch of ground that holds your feet dissolving, disintegrating from under you. Often there's a sign, a harbinger of what's to come. Sometimes there are many signs, like black crows scattered in the road, but they blend into the scenery on the path ahead. You can only spot them when you look back.

If you were never encouraged to be yourself, you often try to blend in instead of standing out. It’s a sense of “if only I was ‘this,’ then someone would love me.

Weeds blend in; roses stand out.

Individually, I blend in. So does he. As a couple, we stand out.

It's like looking at a scalloped picture, frayed at the edges. Everything blends in the background, and she stands out.

As I'm standing up I hear the black van. I hear it before I see it; blended with the twilight, it appears out of its own sound like a solidification, a clotting of the night.

Sometimes you need to stand out in order to blend in." "That makes absolutely no sense.

Sometimes courage requires a willingness to stand out when you would rather blend in.

The stains of so many years of misery make the chair look like it’s a bleeding, rotting corpse all its own. The spot that stands out the most is where his head was when he ate lead the first time. I take another hit from the cigarette, wiping at my eyes. A laugh bubbles out. I thought stains were supposed to fade with age, just like the bad stuff that happens to you, but they don’t. Fifteen years isn’t enough to make blood blend into brown carpets with every other mess? Bullshit.

It takes gumption to wake up every day to face the fickle world and cleave to your morals and values Not flinch at the slightest inflection of disrespect or disdain from wild ones to not give in and mimic the mockery of blending in void of integrity Standing resplendent among the dull and dirty ones who are no longer enthralled with the light of living Who’ve renounced their identity for worldy pleasures It takes audacity to live individually, intellectually, compassionately in your own way Do it anyway!

When I was twenty-two, and all I wanted was to blend in, that rejection was crushing and hopeless and lonely. Years later, when I was finally ready to stand out, the realization that the mainstream didn't want me was freeing and galvanizing. It gave me something to fight for. It taught me that women are an army.

She buys a coffee with a couple quarters and sits in the park. She fools everyone, and always has, letting her mouth fall open (untended, obviously dumb), and never blinking her eyes, which are mean, simple marbles, one-dimensional and lightless. Her shoulders hunch, the long masculine hands uncertain where to rest or hang. But she's tracking, computing, and either discarding or accepting factors other people barely notice. Her costume - the gray jeans, the fake-gold E on a chain doesn't blend in and doesn't stand out. Her awkwardness is strategic, turning people away in boredom or discomfort before they register the vague, haughty, delicious joy she takes in being alive.

I never leave home without my cayenne pepper. I either stash a bottle of the liquid extract in my pocket book or I stick it in the shopping cart I pull around with me all over Manhattan. When it comes to staying right side up in this world, a black woman needs at least three things. The first is a quiet spot of her own, a place away from the nonsense. The second is a stash of money, like the cash my mother kept hidden in the slit of her mattress. The last is several drops of cayenne pepper, always at the ready. Sprinkle that on your food before you eat it and it’ll kill any lurking bacteria. The powder does the trick as well, but I prefer the liquid because it hits the bloodstream quickly. Particularly when eating out, I won’t touch a morsel to my lips ‘til it’s speckled with with cayenne. That’s just one way I take care of my temple, aside from preparing my daily greens, certain other habits have carried me toward the century mark. First thing I do every morning is drink four glasses of water. People think this water business is a joke. But I’m here to tell you that it’s not. I’ve known two elderly people who died of dehydration, one of whom fell from his bed in the middle of the night and couldn’t stand up because he was so parched. Following my water, I drink 8 ounces of fresh celery blended in my Vita-mix. The juice cleanses the system and reduces inflammation. My biggest meal is my first one: oatmeal. I soak my oats overnight so that when I get up all I have to do is turn on the burner. Sometimes I enjoy them with warm almond milk, other times I add grated almonds and berries, put the mixture in my tumbler and shake it until it’s so smooth I can drink it. In any form, oats do the heart good. Throughout the day I eat sweet potatoes, which are filled with fiber, beets sprinkled with a little olive oil, and vegetables of every variety. I also still enjoy plenty of salad, though I stopped adding so many carrots – too much sugar. But I will do celery, cucumbers, seaweed grass and other greens. God’s fresh bounty doesn’t need a lot of dressing up, which is why I generally eat my salad plain. From time to time I do drizzle it with garlic oil. I love the taste. I also love lychee nuts. I put them in the freezer so that when I bite into them cold juice comes flooding out. As terrific as they are, I buy them only once in awhile. I recently bit into an especially sweet one, and then I stuck it right back in the freezer. “Not today, Suzie,” I said to myself, “full of glucose!” I try never to eat late, and certainly not after nine p.m. Our organs need a chance to rest. And before bed, of course, I have a final glass of water. I don’t mess around with my hydration.

I consider these things idly. Each one of them seems the same size as all the others. Not one seems preferable. Fatigue is here, in my body, in my legs and eyes. That is what gets you in the end. Faith is only a word, embroidered.   I look out at the dusk and think about its being winter. The snow falling, gently, effortlessly, covering everything in soft crystal, the mist of moonlight before a rain, blurring the outlines, obliterating color. Freezing to death is painless, they say, after the first chill. You lie back in the snow like an angel made by children and go to sleep. Behind me I feel her presence, my ancestress, my double, turning in midair under the chandelier, in her costume of stars and feathers, a bird stopped in flight, a woman made into an angel, waiting to be found. By me this time. How could I have believed I was alone in here? There were always two of us. Get it over, she says. I'm tired of this melodrama, I'm tired of keeping silent. There's no one you can protect, your life has value to no one. I want it finished.   As I'm standing up I hear the black van. I hear it before I see it; blended with the twilight, it appears out of its own sound like a solidification, a clotting of the night. It turns into the driveway, stops. I can just make out the white eye, the two wings. The paint must be phosphorescent. Two men detach themselves from the shape of it, come up the front steps, ring the bell. I hear the bell toll, ding-dong, like the ghost of a cosmetics woman, down in the hall. Worse is coming, then. I've

Letters blend to give rise to words  Like colors pave way for the birth of million shades! Evanescence reminisces sepia! Memory takes back to black and white! Music pops hot pink! Dance rocks wine red! Marvelous is miraculous as the indigo! Magnificent is magnanimous like Russian red! Splendid is classy like arctic blue! Resplendent inspires like  strawberry pink! Flamboyance is flowery like fuchsia! Flawless is perfect like flamingo! Extraordinary stands out like lime yellow! Peculiar is unique like cyan! Pleasant pleases like periwinkle! Soothing soothes like lemonade! Opulent glitters gold! Spectacular shimmers silver! Nice is as mild as dulce de leche! Attractive dazzles onyx! Powerful is headstrong like tangerine! Puissance stupefies like scarlet red! Mellifluence is dissolving, like lavender! Sonorous sounds magenta! Lovely cutely blushes! Sweet is peachy! Richness is wealthy like lush green! Poverty is brown as in flower wilt! Candid is frank as candy red! Altruism is selfless like parmesan! But, BEAUTY IS IRIDESCENT! Which

As with the other paintings he did in Verrocchio’s shop during the 1470s, Leonardo used thin layers of oil gently blended and blurred, sometimes with his fingers, to create smoky shadows and avoid sharp lines or abrupt transitions. If you stand close enough to the painting at the National Gallery in Washington, DC, you can see his fingerprint just to the right of Ginevra’s jaw, where her ringlets of hair blur into the background juniper tree and a distinct little spiky sprig juts out. Another can be found just behind her right shoulder.67

The Undivided Wholeness of All Things Most mind-boggling of all are Bohm's fully developed ideas about wholeness. Because everything in the cosmos is made out of the seamless holographic fabric of the implicate order, he believes it is as meaningless to view the universe as composed of "parts, " as it is to view the different geysers in a fountain as separate from the water out of which they flow. An electron is not an "elementary particle. " It is just a name given to a certain aspect of the holomovement. Dividing reality up into parts and then naming those parts is always arbitrary, a product of convention, because subatomic particles, and everything else in the universe, are no more separate from one another than different patterns in an ornate carpet. This is a profound suggestion. In his general theory of relativity Einstein astounded the world when he said that space and time are not separate entities, but are smoothly linked and part of a larger whole he called the space-time continuum. Bohm takes this idea a giant step further. He says that everything in the universe is part of a continuum. Despite the apparent separateness of things at the explicate level, everything is a seamless extension of everything else, and ultimately even the implicate and explicate orders blend into each other. Take a moment to consider this. Look at your hand. Now look at the light streaming from the lamp beside you. And at the dog resting at your feet. You are not merely made of the same things. You are the same thing. One thing. Unbroken. One enormous something that has extended its uncountable arms and appendages into all the apparent objects, atoms, restless oceans, and twinkling stars in the cosmos. Bohm cautions that this does not mean the universe is a giant undifferentiated mass. Things can be part of an undivided whole and still possess their own unique qualities. To illustrate what he means he points to the little eddies and whirlpools that often form in a river. At a glance such eddies appear to be separate things and possess many individual characteristics such as size, rate, and direction of rotation, et cetera. But careful scrutiny reveals that it is impossible to determine where any given whirlpool ends and the river begins. Thus, Bohm is not suggesting that the differences between "things" is meaningless. He merely wants us to be aware constantly that dividing various aspects of the holomovement into "things" is always an abstraction, a way of making those aspects stand out in our perception by our way of thinking. In attempts to correct this, instead of calling different aspects of the holomovement "things, " he prefers to call them "relatively independent subtotalities. "10 Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

hope you’ll always live near the ocean. No matter what happened to us, your mother and I had the shore. They say that salt water can heal, and it does, and that the rays of the sun can strengthen your bones—no doubt that’s true—and that the sand makes you slow down and savor your steps. If you close your eyes and listen, the sound of the ocean is the most beautiful music ever written. The tempo of the surf as the tide rolls in matches your breath, the sound of the waves as they crash over the rocks sound like the brushes on a snare. It’s like the opening riff to a great piece of jazz. Sometimes I’m standing out there and I hear the blend and I think Ethel Waters is going to rise out of the surf and start wailing. The ocean is God’s orchestra.

Rach-Uh, my mom says they'll help me blend in better. She says the color would just draw attention to me." Emma snorts. "Oh, she's definitely right. Blue eyes make you look so much more average. In fact, I almost didn't notice you standing there." "That hurts my feelings, Emma." He grins. She giggles. He says, "I'd consider forgiving you-if you come with me to the beach." She sighs. "I can't go with you, Galen." He runs a hand through his hair. "Honestly, Emma, I don't know how much more rejection I can take," he blurts out. In fact, he doesn't remember ever being rejected, except by Emma. Of course, that could be due to the fact that he's a Royal. Or maybe it's because he doesn't spend a lot of time with his kind anyway, let alone the females. Actually, he doesn't spend a lot of time with anyone except Rachel. And Rachel would give him her beating heart if he asked for it. "I'm sorry. It's not about you this time. Well, actually, it kind of is. My mom...well, she thinks we're dating." Her cheeks-and those lips-deepen to red. "Dating?" What is dating again? He tries to remember what Rachel told him...She said it's easy to remember because it's almost the same as...what is the rhyme for it? And then he remembers. "It's easy to remember, because dating rhymes with mating, and they're almost the same," she'd said. He blinks at Emma. "You're mom thinks we're ma-Uh, dating?" She nods biting her lip. For reasons he can't explain, this pleases him. He leans against the passenger door of her car. "Oh. Well. What does it matter if she thinks that?" "I told her we weren't dating, though. Just this morning. Going to the beach with you makes me look like a liar." He scratches the back of his neck. "I don't understand. If you told her we weren't dating, then why does she think we are?" She relaxes against his driver-side door. "Well, this is all actually your fault, not mine." "I'm obviously not asking the right questions-" "The way you acted toward me when I hit my head, Galen. Some people saw that. And they told my mom. She thinks I've been hiding you from her, keeping you a secret. Because she thinks we've been...we've been..." "Dating?" he offers. He can't understand why she'd have a difficult time discussing dating, if it means what he thinks it does-spending time with one human more than others to see if he or she would be a good mate. The Syrena do the same, only they call it sifting-and sifting doesn't take nearly as long as dating. A Syrena can sift out a mate within a few days. He'd laughed when Rachel said some humans date for years. So indecisive. Then an echo of Toraf's voice whispers to him, calling him a hypocrite. You're twenty years old. Why haven't you sifted for a mate? But that doesn't make him indecisive. He just hasn't had time to sift and keep his responsibility watching the humans. If it weren't for that, he'd already be settled down. How can Toraf think Emma's the reason he hasn't sifted yet? Up until three weeks ago, he didn't even know she existed.

I hope you’ll always live near the ocean. No matter what happened to us, your mother and I had the shore. They say that salt water can heal, and it does, and that the rays of the sun can strengthen your bones—no doubt that’s true—and that the sand makes you slow down and savor your steps. If you close your eyes and listen, the sound of the ocean is the most beautiful music ever written. The tempo of the surf as the tide rolls in matches your breath, the sound of the waves as they crash over the rocks sound like the brushes on a snare. It’s like the opening riff to a great piece of jazz. Sometimes I’m standing out there and I hear the blend and I think Ethel Waters is going to rise out of the surf and start wailing. The ocean is God’s orchestra. I will miss it.

I believe you have my umbrella," he says, almost out of breath but wearing a grin that has too much wolf in it to be properly sheepish. Celia stares up at him in surprise. At first she wonders what on earth Chandresh's assistant is doing in Prauge, as she has never seen him outside London. Then comes the question of how he could possess such an umbrella. As she stairs at him, confused, the pieces of the puzzle begin to shift together. She remembers every encounter she had with the man now standing before her in the rain, recalling the distress he had exhibited at her audition, the years of glances and comments she had read as no more than coy flirtation. And the constant impression as though he is not really there, blending so well into the background that she would occasionally forget he was in the room.

Chocolate Cola Cupcakes with Fizzy Cola Frosting Makes approx. 12 large cupcakes 200g flour, sifted 250g superfine sugar 1/2 tsp. baking powder pinch salt 1 large free-range egg 125ml buttermilk 1 tsp. vanilla extract 125g unsalted butter 2 tbsp. cocoa powder 175ml Coca-Cola For the frosting 125g unsalted butter, softened 400g confectioners’ sugar 11/2 tbsp. cola syrup (I used Soda Stream) 40ml whole milk Pop Rocks, to taste fizzy cola bottles, candied lemon slices, striped straws or candy canes to decorate Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line two 6-cup muffin pans with paper liners. In a large bowl, combine the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. In a separate bowl, beat together the egg, buttermilk and vanilla. Melt the butter, cocoa and Coca-Cola in a saucepan over low heat. Pour this mixture into the dry ingredients, stir well with a wooden spoon, and then add the buttermilk mixture, beating until the batter is well blended. Pour into your prepared pans and bake for 15 minutes, or until risen and a skewer comes out clean. Set aside to cool. To make the frosting, beat together the butter and confectioners’ sugar until no lumps are left—I use a free-standing mixer with the paddle attachment, but you could use a hand-held mixer instead. Stir the cola syrup and milk together in a pitcher, then pour into the butter and sugar mixture while beating slowly. Once incorporated, increase the speed to high and beat until light and fluffy. Carefully stir in your Pop Rocks to taste. It does lose its pop after a while, so the icing is best done just a few hours before eating. Spoon your icing into a piping bag and pipe over your cooled cupcakes. Decorate with fizzy cola bottles or a slice of candied lemon, a stripy straw or candy cane and an extra sprinkling of popping candy.

There are four cheeses! It's a 'Quattro Formaggi' Pizza!" "A 'Four-Cheese' Pizza? Well, duh. That's a standard pizza topping, even in Italy. There's nothing special or even unusual about that! So why the big reaction?!" "Because the four cheeses were blended together and balanced with absolute perfection! The deliciousness of most cheeses is rooted in their mellow richness and sharp saltiness. With those flavors as his baseline... he took four cheeses and balanced them so that their quirks and strengths play off each other brilliantly! That sharp, salty battle is a stark contrast to the thick sweetness of the shigureni beef- the gap between them creating a full-bodied and indescribably delicious flavor! Then there's the texture contrast of the gooey cheese and the crisply fragrant crust..." "And you can't forget the tingly bite of the black pepper sprinkled across the top. What a marvelous accent! All the various flavors blossom to their full potential inside the mouth, each making the salty cheese stand out more and more..." We came out of the blocks with the bitterness of the artichokes... then we jumped to the cynarine-boosted sweetness of the shigureni beef... ... and ended with a leap to a salty Quattro Formaggi Blend!

Pumpkin Cupcakes with Whipped Cream Frosting 2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 teaspoon coarse salt 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon 1 teaspoon ground ginger ¼ teaspoon nutmeg 1 cup packed light-brown sugar 1 cup granulated sugar 2 sticks unsalted butter, melted 4 large eggs, lightly beaten 1 can (15 ounces) pumpkin puree Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line cupcake pan with paper liners. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg. In a large bowl, mix together brown sugar, granulated sugar, melted butter, and eggs. Add dry ingredients, and mix until smooth. Lastly, mix in the pumpkin until thoroughly blended. Scoop the batter evenly into the cupcake liners. Bake 20 to 25 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Let cool before frosting. Makes 24. Whipped Cream Frosting ½ cup heavy whipping cream, chilled 4 tablespoons powdered sugar In a medium bowl, whip heavy cream on medium-high speed for 3 minutes. In a small bowl, sift powdered sugar. Add the sugar to the whipped cream mixture and mix on medium-high speed until stiff peaks form. Frosting should be able to stand on its own. Garnish idea: Sprinkle with nutmeg or cinnamon.

It was simply that they were grave, distant, intent upon something that she could not see. Their eyes were held upon some vision out of range, something away in the end of distance, some reality that she did not know, or even suspect. What was it that they saw? Probably they saw nothing after all, nothing at all. But then that was the trick, wasn’t it? To see nothing at all, nothing in the absolute. To see beyond the landscape, beyond every shape and shadow and color, that was to see nothing. That was to be free and finished, complete, spiritual. To see nothing slowly and by degrees, at last; to see first the pure, bright colors of near things, then all pollutions of color, all things blended and vague and dim in the distance, to see finally beyond the clouds and the pale wash of the sky—the none and nothing beyond that. To say “beyond the mountain,” and to mean it, to mean, simply, beyond everything for which the mountain stands, of which it signifies the being. Somewhere, if only she could see it, there was neither nothing nor anything. And there, just there, that was the last reality. Even so, in the same attitude of non-being, Abel had cut the wood. She had not seen into his eyes until it was too late, until they had returned upon everything.

Being an outsider, being picked on, was very painful, but in hindsight it made me a better judge of people. In my life I would spend a lot of time assessing threats, judging tone of voice, and figuring out the shifting dynamic in a hallway or locker room crowd. Surviving a bully requires constant learning and adaptation. Which is why bullies are so powerful, because it’s so much easier to be a follower, to go with the crowd, to just blend in. Those years of bullying added up, minor indignity after indignity, making clear the consequences of power. Harry Howell had power, and he wielded it with compassion and understanding. That wasn’t always easy for him, because he had to deal with a lot of immature kids. Others had power, like the bullies at school, and they found it far easier to wield it against those who were defenseless and to just go along with the group rather than stand up to it. I learned this lesson, too, in one of the great early mistakes of my life. * * * In 1978, I attended the College of William & Mary. I was one of many insecure, homesick, frightened kids living away from home for the first time, although we would admit none of that to one another, or even to ourselves. Because of overcrowding, I was among seventeen freshman boys living in a

She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.

Look at all the beautiful, delicate layers! It's a perfect mille-feuille! "Heh. I call it... ...Mushroom Mille-Feuille with Duxelles Filling. Eat up!" Incredible! The exciting flavors of multiple kinds of mushrooms meld together with the crispy, ultrathin layers of piecrust in a moist and magical harmony! "The main ingredient Rindo Kobayashi chose was shiitake mushrooms! She used olive oil to cook them into a confit, trapping and magnifying their natural umami flavor!" Wait... this tang! "Aah. Champignon mushrooms and shallots, sautéed to a golden brown in garlic and butter and then simmered to a paste in broth. Cracked nuts and heavy cream were blended in to make a Duxelles, which she then sandwiched between the Mille-Feuille layers. *Duxelles is a mushroom paste often used as a base for fillings or sauces.* A perfectly balanced tart note makes the salty savoriness of the confit stand out... ... while allowing the mellow sweetness of the shiitake to linger on the tongue! Though I can't put my finger on what this sour flavor is from. What is it?" "Ants.❤️ I extracted formic acid from ants and mixed it into my Duxelles!" "WAAAAH?!" Too much formic acid is poisonous, of course. But in small amounts it can be a wonderful culinary accent. It has no extraneous sweetness, just a sharp, invigoratingly tart tang. "Not only that, if you add it to a sweet base, it can create deeper, more nuanced flavors than the more commonly used citrus fruits.

What a wallop of rich, full-bodied flavor! Tangy spiciness is flooding in my mouth! This ain't no sweet tea cake! Ankimo?! It's filled with ankimo monkfish liver!" "Yep! You've got it in one. This here is a special little dish I made... I dub it THE ANKIMONAKA GUTS SANDWICH!" "Wait a minute. There were no rice wafer shells or batter in the ingredient trucks! How could you make a monaka sandwich?!" "Easy enough to make your own with a little cornstarch and shiratama rice flour. Squeeze some batter between two muffin molds- like these- bake them, and voilà! You have your own instant rice wafers. It's a pretty delicate operation, though, so you've gotta be patient and careful. As for the filling, I started out by trimming and deveining some monkfish liver, then I salted it to remove its fishiness. Next, I whipped up a broth of bonito stock seasoned with soy sauce, sake and sugar and then simmered the liver. I pressed it through a strainer until it was a nice, smooth paste and mixed in my handmade Shichimi red pepper blend. After that, all that was left was to stuff the rice wafer shells with it and serve!" Light, crispy wafers and thick, sticky monkfish-liver paste! Those two and the mountain yam he mixed in with them make for marvelously contrasting textures! And their flavors! The sharp spiciness spreads its addicting tingle through my entire mouth! He struck the perfect balance between the savory umami of the bonito stock and the salty soy sauce too... Which makes the tangy spiciness of his red pepper blend stand out all the more!

I took up the pestle as she left, and pounded and ground automatically, paying little heed to the results. The shut window blocked the sound both of the rain and the crowd below; the two blended in a soft, pattering susurrus of menace. Like any schoolchild, I had read Dickens. And earlier authors, as well, with their descriptions of the pitiless justice of these times, meted out to all illdoers, regardless of age or circumstance. But to read, from a cozy distance of one or two hundred years, accounts of child hangings and judicial mutilation, was a far different thing than to sit quietly pounding herbs a few feet above such an occurrence. Could I bring myself to interfere directly, if the sentence went against the boy? I moved to the window, carrying the mortar with me, and peered out. The crowd had increased, as merchants and housewives, attracted by the gathering, wandered down the High Street to investigate. Newcomers leaned close as the standees excitedly relayed the details, then merged into the body of the crowd, more faces turned expectantly to the door of the house. Looking down on the assembly, standing patiently in the drizzle awaiting a verdict, I suddenly had a vivid understanding of something. Like so many, I had heard, appalled, the reports that trickled out of postwar Germany; the stories of deportations and mass murder, of concentration camps and burnings. And like so many others had done, and would do, for years to come, I had asked myself, “How could the people have let it happen? They must have known, must have seen the trucks, the coming and going, the fences and smoke. How could they stand by and do nothing?” Well, now I knew. The stakes were not even life or death in this case. And Colum’s patronage would likely prevent any physical attack on me. But my hands grew clammy around the porcelain bowl as I thought of myself stepping out, alone and powerless, to confront that mob of solid and virtuous citizens, avid for the excitement of punishment and blood to alleviate the tedium of existence. People are gregarious by necessity. Since the days of the first cave dwellers, humans—hairless, weak, and helpless save for cunning—have survived by joining together in groups; knowing, as so many other edible creatures have found, that there is protection in numbers. And that knowledge, bred in the bone, is what lies behind mob rule. Because to step outside the group, let alone to stand against it, was for uncounted thousands of years death to the creature who dared it. To stand against a crowd would take something more than ordinary courage; something that went beyond human instinct. And I feared I did not have it, and fearing, was ashamed.

(Summer of 2010) Chiaz Natherth- It was just going to be a typical summer day. I am at the local watering hole with my bud Melvin Shezor; we were just there to gaze at the girl gaze, sitting on lawn chairs. I had warm lemonade in my right hand at the time. I am looking around at all the bodies that are bobbing in the water; they all just seem to blend. The lifeguard is blowing her whistle while screaming at the little kids that are running around. Some stunning bodies are smacking the cold blue water with great speed, from the high dive. But- there is no more perfect figure there than hers. Everyone else seems to fade away out of my vision, along with all the ear-shattering noises. Bryan Adams ‘Heaven’ is playing in the background, and it seemed to be pronounced to my senses. When I am looking at her, it is like she is moving in slow motion, swimming across the pool. She climbed up the ladder and out of the pool. Her body dripping with water… what a moment, there is even water dripping down her chest. She looks amazing in that petite pink bikini. I was thinking to myself, that is a very cute looking camel-toe you got showing there Nevaeh! I never knew that she had a heart-shaped belly button piercing, when did that happen? Also, I could tell that her swimsuit was made by her, just like most of the sun-dresses she wears in the summertime too. Because it was not like any others I have ever seen around, it is cute, somewhat skimpy, and tailored to her perfect body. The fabric was not meant to get wet, it was somewhat see-through, yet she did not know, though it looks very good what can I say. She is walking towards me while running her fingers through her long brown hair. ‘I was thinking this is too good to be for real.’ She walked by and said ‘hi!’ and I was at loss for words. She was already gone, but I still babbled something like ‘Ahh-he-oll-o.’ At that point, into the changing room, she went, and I just sat there trying to fathom what had just happened. Melvin Shezor- ‘Chiaz! Ah, Chiaz! Hello, earth to Chiaz, snap out of its dude.’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘She is so fine! I would not mind having her on my arm.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Yah, the man she is not bad. But- isn’t she into girls though. So, do you like Nevaeh?’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘I do not think that she is, and well… Yes, did you see her in that swimsuit? She is adorable in every way.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Really is that so? Go talk to her!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘No way!’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Why not, you pussy!’ Chiaz Naztherth- ‘If Alissa finds out that I like her, or even looked at her I am going to die.’ Melvin Shezor- ‘Ha, it sucks to be you man.’ Chiaz Natherth- ‘Hey, I will see you later, I got to go.’ (Text messages are going off… like crazy) Melvin Shezor- ‘Pu-ss-y!’ (Shouting as Chiaz Natherth is walking out the exit gate.) (Chiaz- He just waved it off, with the finger that is not supposed to be used in public, and does not think any more about it from that point on.) Chiaz Naztherth- Summer is over! Yet she is with him… he is so unconfident in himself that he has to follow me around. He gives me vain advice on what to do, and how to do it, yet I would have to say I need to stand up for myself more than what I do, yet I do not because of her. He attempts to belittle me, with his words of temperament to her. These results lead to her having breakdowns, where she is feeling miserable because she is stuck in the middle. She does not know what to do! She doesn't know how to feel! She does not want to hurt anyone's feelings, yet she is the one that is left to choke on her tears. Yes, I will save you long before you drowned!

Mazel Amsel- I have the obsession of destroying Nevaeh, she is so perfect, I cannot stand it! My girls have to be on top, and I am never going to let her be anything, I will make sure of it! That is what I have been doing for years. Nevaeh that no good little pussy licker; even if she knows it is me, she will not be able to ‘Prove it.’ I am just that well-liked by everyone, I am so powerful that no one will ever defeat me. I am the master manipulator, Nevaeh- yes, she is the tower! She is about for a hundred pounds, unnatural blond hair, lime green glowing eyes, and a voice that bellows! To me, she looks like a bulldog in the face, yet evil wicked witch-like also, yet to everyone else she blends in, to the others she looks as they do, just a normal mom, with normal kids. Yet I think she is crumbling, I think some people are seeing through her veil, because of what happened recently. Mazel- I have everyone wrapped around my little finger. Likewise, if they do not bow down to me, I will make their life a living hell. That is the way; I have to have it, all the time for Nevaeh! I have to know what she is doing at all times. I have to hack into her social networking and get her pears to think she is a ‘Creep’ and ‘Stocker’ to young girls. So, she has no friends at all. So, my girls can be the supreme of this area, so that they can do as they please, without anyone stopping them from being the best, no matter what, and from getting what they want, and what I want for them. Besides, foremost I wanted to make sure that she would never date anyone. So, I came up with the story of telling everyone that she was into girls and that she is just plain crazy. I should know my eyes are on her always. I did not want to see her go to proms; I did not want to see her succeed. I did not want her to be loved. I would like to see her die, and not walk away from it. I have dreamed of ways to kill her repeatedly. Like this one, I would like to see her be impaled on a sharp wooden stick, starting through her butt hole, and then slowly have gravity have it go up into her delicious miniature body until it hits her brain, and she screams out my girl’s names, as we get what we need. I would love to see a Nevaeh- kabob! I would love to see her stoned out in the open with rocks! I would love to see my girls bite their nipples off with their teeth! I want to see my girl claw her up to head to toe. I hunger to see them scratch her sweet blue eyes that are so heavenly right out of her face! I want to see her gush that cobalt blood like a waterfall from her naked sliced-up body. Yes, I want us to torture her any way we can until she says yes to us. We are going to get at anything of hers we can until she comes with us! As we would, all dance around her, as we would light her up, cheerfully for the last time. How I would love to bleach and fry that perfect hair with chemicals. I and we all in our family want to fuck her up and down anyways we can! Mwah Ha, ha! Yes, Beforehand, we all would kiss, touch, lick, and stick her, and do what we want to get the life from her by sucking away. We would eat her soul away as it would come down from the heavens then through her body, and into ours, as we would drink it out, the way we do. Yes, yes, hell- yes, I can see it now! Yes, I want her soul! Besides, anything or everything I can get out of her to add to my shrine. We even have a voodoo doll of her with pins in it. I have a few things of hers like her hymen-damaged red blood tarnished pink polka-dotted gym underwear, and her indigo pantiliner she had on. That my girl ripped off of her in school, the more things we have the more we can control her mind, but I want more!

Angie preferred to blend in to her surroundings, so she let her fellow students think she was on the same tight budget they were. Not starving, but always glad to get a free ticket or a cheap meal. She found it easier to get along with everyone when she didn’t stand out like a peacock in a dovecote. People were more likely to be themselves around someone they thought was like them.

Dear Daughter, Your worth is not in others opinions, you don’t have to be the same as everyone else. I didn’t make you different, and one-of-a-kind, so you could blend in. I made you to be unique to stand out, like a candle in the darkness, to shine for me. Someone else’s perfect will never be as high as mine, so let me make you complete/perfect. Dear one, don’t let the thief comparison steal your joy, I’ve given you so many gifts to use for me. Can anything I give you be less then excellent?

JULEKAKE Julekake means Yule Cake or Christmas Cake. Every Scandinavian family has their favorite version, usually baked by Mor Mor (Grandmother), who is always present, even if she’s passed on. This cake should never be prepared alone. Stand beside someone you love as you cut the citron into chunks and blend it with the flour, cardamom, fruits, butter, eggs, yeast and sugar. The scent of cardamom will fill you with nostalgia as the aroma of baking fills the house. Moist and tender, topped with gjetost (Scandinavian goat cheese) and a pat of butter, this is the holiday treat we wait all year for. Turn on the oven for 10 minutes at 150 degrees F, then shut it off but keep the door closed. This is where you’ll set the dough to rise. Use a big wide mixing bowl to blend together: 5 cups white flour 1 tablespoon cardamom 2 cups candied fruit and citron 11/2 cups raisins In a pan, blend: 2 cups milk, scalded (can be done on the stove or in the microwave) 1 cup sugar, dissolved in the scalded milk 1 cup butter, melted in the scalded milk Cool to lukewarm. Combine a little of the milk with: 1 packet active dry yeast When dissolved, add it to the rest of the milk mixture. Then add everything to the flour mixture to make a soft dough. Add enough flour to create a pliable dough that doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl. Turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead further. Place in a buttered bowl and turn it over once, so the oiled side is up. Place a dish towel over the top, and set the bowl in the warm oven for a half hour to 45 minutes. Punch down and knead again. This time, separate the dough into two loaves or rounds. Cover with a dish towel again, and let it rise once more for a half hour to 45 minutes. Once risen, bake in a 400 degree oven for 30-40 minutes. Place a piece of foil over the tops after about 25 minutes if it gets too dark. Source: Adapted from Christmas Customs Around the World by Herbert H. Wernecke (1959)

To blend in or to stand out, its your choice. But, whichever choice you make, make sure you are comfortable and happy about it! Because the key to life is: Love the life you live, Live the life you Love!

Mixing Genres So by now you may have selected three genres and a style. We need to whittle that down. While novice authors tend to think blending genres makes them stand out, it does the opposite.

We are all social chameleons, adjusting our skin to blend in with, or sometimes stand out from, whatever crowd we happen to be in.

I tried to explain my longing for the vanished city. As the walls go on rising, the character of the place grows more and more obscure. The mood of a street or suburb, that unlikely blend of outlooks expressed by the houses and the people living in them, no longer brushes off on you as you pass. You think there is life behind one guarded façade or another, a mind behind the blank stare, but you cannot be sure. ‘It’s creepy,’ she said, ‘I absolutely agree. It’s like those people at Moyo who eat three courses without taking off their shades. You think they must be watching you, and so you watch them, which is the whole point.’ I take comfort in the debris strewn over the walls: the shadows of numbers pilfered for scrap, the unstrung lyres of electric fencing, the armed response signs, especially the old and weathered ones, which fade unevenly depending on how their colours stand up to the sun. Sometimes the names and numbers of the companies have bleached out entirely while the emblems of snarling dogs and charging elephants persist. All that remains on the oldest signs is two black pistols pointed at one another in a perpetual showdown. Their candour is admirable. They’re empty gestures, like snapped wires and dog-eared spikes. The company faded away years ago, but their boards are still everywhere saying, ‘Bang!’ I" (from "Double Negative" by Ivan Vladislavic, Teju Cole)

How had it begun? Like everything: with mothers and fathers. Because of Lydia’s mother and father, because of her mother’s and father’s mothers and fathers. Because long ago, her mother had gone missing, and her father had brought her home. Because more than anything, her mother had wanted to stand out; because more than anything, her father had wanted to blend in. Because those things had been impossible.

Let's never forget our good days; we should string them together like pearls on a necklace, to be treasured and remembered whenever days don't make us feel as good. I think that sometimes it's the memory of simple, ordinary, happy days that sustains us. The ones without expectation, that come with no strings attached. The ones that stand out for blending in, and can be appreciated for that reason alone.

When you blend in too much with everyone else in your niche, you make it hard for readers to choose you. There’s nothing to help you stand out in the increasingly competitive online space.

After Lincoln became president he campaigned for colonization, and even in the midst of war with the Confederacy found time to work on the project, appointing Rev. James Mitchell as Commissioner of Emigration, in charge of finding a place to which blacks could be sent. On August 14th, 1862, he invited a group of black leaders to the White House to try to persuade them to leave the country, telling them that “there is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us.” He urged them to lead their people to a colonization site in Central America. Lincoln was therefore the first president to invite a delegation of blacks to the White House—and did so to ask them to leave the country. Later that year, in a message to Congress, he argued not just for voluntary colonization but for the forcible removal of free blacks. Lincoln’s successor, Andrew Johnson, shared these anti-black sentiments: “This is a country for white men, and by God, as long as I am President, it shall be a government for white men.” Like Jefferson, he thought whites had a clear destiny: “This whole vast continent is destined to fall under the control of the Anglo-Saxon race—the governing and self-governing race.” Before he became president, James Garfield wrote, “[I have] a strong feeling of repugnance when I think of the negro being made our political equal and I would be glad if they could be colonized, sent to heaven, or got rid of in any decent way . . . .” Theodore Roosevelt blamed Southerners for bringing blacks to America. In 1901 he wrote: “I have not been able to think out any solution to the terrible problem offered by the presence of the Negro on this continent . . . .” As for Indians, he once said, “I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are the dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t inquire too closely into the health of the tenth.” William Howard Taft once told a group of black college students, “Your race is adapted to be a race of farmers, first, last, and for all times.” Woodrow Wilson was a confirmed segregationist, and as president of Princeton he refused to admit blacks. He enforced segregation in government offices and was supported in this by Charles Eliot, president of Harvard, who argued that “civilized white men” could not be expected to work with “barbarous black men.” During the presidential campaign of 1912, Wilson took a strong position in favor of excluding Asians: “I stand for the national policy of exclusion. . . . We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the Caucasian race. . . . Oriental coolieism will give us another race problem to solve and surely we have had our lesson.” Warren Harding also wanted the races kept separate: “Men of both races [black and white] may well stand uncompromisingly against every suggestion of social equality. This is not a question of social equality, but a question of recognizing a fundamental, eternal, inescapable difference. Racial amalgamation there cannot be.

This is the last chapter of the book, but it is the beginning of your journey in becoming a super hero. Super heroes possess extraordinary abilities and skills that leave the average human jealous, speechless, and in awe. They also have the uncanny ability to stay calm, cool, and collected in the face of danger, while everybody else is panicking. While doing their normal day activities they might also blend in with the crowd and not stand out at all. But when duty calls, they can switch into super hero mode as fast as lightning.

The man wore a black suit rather than a tuxedo, which made him both stand out from and blend into the crowd, a sore thumb on a broken hand.

It was about six weeks before I left Madura for good that a great change in my life took place . It was quite sudden. I was sitting in a room on the first floor of my uncle’s house. I seldom had any sickness and on that day there was nothing wrong with my health, but a sudden, violent fear of death overtook me. There was nothing in my state of health to account for it; and I did not try to account for it or to find out whether there was any reason for the fear. I just felt, ‘I am going to die,’ and began thinking what to do about it. It did not occur to me to consult a doctor or my elders or friends. I felt that I had to solve the problem myself, then and there. The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: ‘Now death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies.’ And I at once dramatized the occurrence of death. I lay with my limbs stretched out stiff as though rigor mortis had set in and imitated a corpse so as to give greater reality to the enquiry. I held my breath and kept my lips tightly closed so that no sound could escape, so that neither the word ‘I’ or any other word could be uttered, ‘Well then,’ I said to myself, ‘this body is dead. It will be carried stiff to the burning ground and there burnt and reduced to ashes. But with the death of this body am I dead? Is the body ‘I’? It is silent and inert but I feel the full force of my personality and even the voice of the ‘I’ within me, apart from it. So I am Spirit transcending the body. The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. This means I am the deathless Spirit.’ All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly, almost without thought-process. ‘I’ was something very real, the only real thing about my present state, and all the conscious activity connected with my body was centred on that ‘I’. From that moment onwards the ‘I’ or Self focused attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on. Other thoughts might come and go like the various notes of music, but the ‘I’ continued like the fundamental sruti note that underlies and blends with all the other notes. Whether the body was engaged in talking, reading, or anything else, I was still centred on ‘I’. Previous to that crisis I had no clear perception of my Self and was not consciously attracted to it. I felt no perceptible or direct interest in it, much less any inclination to dwell permanently in it... One of the features of my new state was my changed attitude to the Meenakshi Temple. Formerly I used to go there occasionally with friends to look at the images and put the sacred ash and vermillion on my brow and would return home almost unmoved. But after the awakening I went there almost every evening. I used to go alone and stand motionless for a long time before an image of Siva or Meenakshi or Nataraja and the sixty-three saints, and as I stood there waves of emotion overwhelmed me.

Its better to stand out in a crowd than it is to blend into a crowd

Montreal November 1704 Temperature 34 degrees Tannhahorens did not look at Mercy. The tip of his knife advanced and the Frenchman backed away from it. He was a very strong man, possibly stronger than Tannhahorens. But behind Tannhahorens were twenty heavily armed braves. The Frenchman kept backing and Tannhahorens kept pressing. No sailor dared move a muscle, not outnumbered as they were. The Sauk let out a hideous wailing war cry. Mercy shuddered with the memory of other war cries. Even more terrified, all the French took another step back--and three of them fell into the St. Lawrence River. The Sauk burst into wild laughter. The voyageurs hooted and booed. The sailors threw ropes to their floundering comrades, because only Indians knew how to swim. Tannhahorens took Mercy’s hand and led her to one of the pirogues, and the Sauk paddled close, hanging on to the edge of the dock so that Mercy could climb in. Mercy could not look at the Sauk. She had shamed Tannhahorens in front of them. Mercy climbed in and Tannhahorens stepped in after her, and the men paddled slowly upstream to Tannhahorens’s canoe. The other pirogue stayed at the wharf, where those Sauk continued to stand, their weapons shining. Eventually the French began to load the ship again. “Daughter,” said Tannhahorens, “the sailors are not good men.” She nodded. He bent until he could look directly into her eyes, something Indians did not care for as a rule. “Daughter.” She flushed scarlet. On her white cheeks, guilt would always be revealed. “The cross protects,” said Tannhahorens. “Or so the French fathers claim. Perhaps it does. But better protection is to stay out of danger.” Did Tannhahorens think she had gotten lost? Did he believe that she had ended up on the wharf by accident? That she was waving the cross around for protection? Or was he, in the way of Indians, allowing that to be the circumstance because it was easier? When he had thanked the Sauk sufficiently and they had agreed to tell Otter that Mercy had gone home with her father, Tannhahorens paddled back to Kahnawake. His long strong arms bent into the current. Her family had not trusted her after all. Tannhahorens must have been following her. Or, in the way of a real father, he had not trusted Montreal. Either way, she was defeated. There was no escape. If there is no escape, and if there is also no ransom, what is there for me? thought Mercy. I don’t want to be alone. A single star in a black and terrible night. How can I endure the name Alone Star? “Why do you call me Munnonock?” she asked. She wanted desperately to go home and end this ugly day. Home. It was still a word of warmth and comfort. Still a word of safety and love. The homes she had known misted and blended and she did not really know if it was Nistenha in the longhouse or Stepmama in Deerfield or her mother in heaven whose home she wanted. “You are brave, daughter,” said Tannhahorens without looking at her, without breaking his rhythm, “and can stand alone. You shine with courage, and so shone every night of your march. You are our hope for sons and daughters to come. On you much depends.

5. The Mystery of Life. Thus far we have pointed out the inevitable conflictions in life in order to prepare ourselves for an insight into the depth of life. We are far from being pessimistic, for we believe that life consists in confliction, but that confliction does not end in confliction, but in a new form of harmony. Hope comes to conflict with fear, and is often threatened with losing its hold on mind; then it renews its life and takes root still deeper than before. Peace is often disturbed with wars, but then it gains a still firmer ground than ever. Happiness is driven out of mind by melancholy, then it is re-enforced by favourable conditions and returns with double strength. Spirit is dragged down by matter from its ideal heaven, then, incited by shame, it tries a higher flight. Good is opposed by evil, then it gathers more strength and vanquishes its foe. Truth is clouded by falsehood, then it issues forth with its greater light. Liberty is endangered by tyranny, then it overthrows it with a splendid success. Manifoldness stands out boldly against unity; difference against agreement; particularity against generality; individuality against society. Manifoldness, nevertheless, instead of annihilating, enriches unity; difference, instead of destroying agreement, gives it variety; particularities, instead of putting an end to generality, increase its content; individuals, instead of breaking the harmony of society, strengthen the power of it. Thus 'Universal Life does not swallow up manifoldness nor extinguish differences, but it is the only means of bringing to its full development the detailed content of reality; in particular, it does not abolish the great oppositions of life and world, but takes them up into itself and brings them into fruitful relations with each other.' Therefore 'our life is a mysterious blending of freedom and necessity, power and limitation, caprice and law; yet these opposites are constantly seeking and finding a mutual adjustment.' 6.

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A bit more than that, I expect.” For the first time, the young man took his eyes off Roger, shifting his glance to one side. Following the direction of his gaze, Roger felt a jolt like an electric shock. He hadn’t seen the man at the edge of the clearing, though he must have been there all the time, standing motionless. He wore a faded hunting kilt whose browns and greens blended into the grass and brush, as his flaming hair blended with the brilliant leaves. He looked as if he’d grown out of the forest. Beyond

Don’t blend in; instead, clash with your environment. Stand out. Be uniquely different. That’s what will draw attention to your ideas.

Anarchism is the great liberator of man from the phantoms that have held him captive; it is the arbiter and pacifier of the two forces for individual and social harmony. To accomplish that unity, Anarchism has declared war on the pernicious influences which have so far prevented the harmonious blending of individual and social instincts, the individual and society. Religion, the dominion of the human mind; Property, the dominion of human needs; and Government, the dominion of human conduct, represent the stronghold of man's enslavement and all the horrors it entails. Religion! How it dominates man's mind, how it humiliates and degrades his soul. God is everything, man is nothing, says religion. But out of that nothing God has created a kingdom so despotic, so tyrannical, so cruel, so terribly exacting that naught but gloom and tears and blood have ruled the world since gods began. Anarchism rouses man to rebellion against this black monster. Break your mental fetters, says Anarchism to man, for not until you think and judge for yourself will you get rid of the dominion of darkness, the greatest obstacle to all progress. Property, the dominion of man's needs, the denial of the right to satisfy his needs. Time was when property claimed a divine right, when it came to man with the same refrain, even as religion, "Sacrifice! Abnegate! Submit!" The spirit of Anarchism has lifted man from his prostrate position. He now stands erect, with his face toward the light. He has learned to see the insatiable, devouring, devastating nature of property, and he is preparing to strike the monster dead. "Property is robbery," said the great French Anarchist, Proudhon. Yes, but without risk and danger to the robber. Monopolizing the accumulated efforts of man, property has robbed him of his birthright, and has turned him loose a pauper and an outcast. Property has not even the time-worn excuse that man does not create enough to satisfy all needs. The A B C student of economics knows that the productivity of labor within the last few decades far exceeds normal demand a hundredfold. But what are normal demands to an abnormal institution? The only demand that property recognizes is its own gluttonous appetite for greater wealth, because wealth means power; the power to subdue, to crush, to exploit, the power to enslave, to outrage, to degrade. America is particularly boastful of her great power, her enormous national wealth. Poor America, of what avail is all her wealth, if the individuals comprising the nation are wretchedly poor? If they live in squalor, in filth, in crime, with hope and joy gone, a homeless, soilless army of human prey. It is generally conceded that unless the returns of any business venture exceed the cost, bankruptcy is inevitable. But those engaged in the business of producing wealth have not yet learned even this simple lesson. Every year the cost of production in human life is growing larger (50,000 killed, 100,000 wounded in America last year); the returns to the masses, who help to create wealth, are ever getting smaller. Yet America continues to be blind to the inevitable bankruptcy of our business of production. Nor is this the only crime of the latter. Still more fatal is the crime of turning the producer into a mere particle of a machine, with less will and decision than his master of steel and iron. Man is being robbed not merely of the products of his labor, but of the power of free initiative, of originality, and the interest in, or desire for, the things he is making.

She'd loved birds long before her physical limitations kept her grounded. She'd found a birding diary of her grandmother's in a trunk in the attic when she was Frankie's age, and when she asked her father about it, he dug through boxes on a shelf high above her head, handing down a small pair of binoculars and some field guides. She'd seen her first prothonotary warbler when she was nine, sitting alone on a tupelo stump in the forest, swatting at mosquitoes targeting the pale skin behind her ears. She glanced up from the book she was reading only to be startled by an unexpected flash of yellow. Holding her breath, she fished for the journal she kept in her pocket, focusing on the spot in the willow where he might be. A breeze stirred the branches, and she saw the brilliant yellow head and underparts standing out like petals of a sunflower against the backdrop of leaves; the under tail, a stark white. His beak was long, pointed and black; his shoulders a mossy green, a blend of the citron yellow of his head and the flat slate of his feathers. He had a black dot of an eye, a bead of jet set in a field of sun. Never had there been anything so perfect. When she blinked he disappeared, the only evidence of his presence a gentle sway of the branch. It was a sort of magic, unveiled to her. He had been hers, even if only for a few seconds. With a stub of pencil- 'always a pencil,' her grandmother had written. 'You can write with a pencil even in the rain'- she noted the date and time, the place and the weather. She made a rough sketch, using shorthand for her notes about the bird's coloring, then raced back to the house, raspberry canes and brambles speckling bloody trails across her legs. In the field guide in the top drawer of her desk, she found him again: prothonotary warbler, 'prothonotary' for the clerks in the Roman Catholic Church who wore robes of a bright yellow. It made absolute sense to her that something so beautiful would be associated with God. After that she spent countless days tromping through the woods, toting the drab knapsack filled with packages of partially crushed saltines, the bottles of juice, the bruised apples and half-melted candy bars, her miniature binoculars slung across one shoulder. She taught herself how to be patient, how to master the boredom that often accompanied careful observation. She taught herself how to look for what didn't want to be seen.

You were not designed to blend in. God created you to Stand out from the crowd.

Trust me, it wasn't your fault If you’ve ever suffered the accusations of people who objectified you as an emblem of darkness, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been haunted by the opinions of your friends, it wasn’t your fault. If they’ve ever assumed the worst of you, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been judged by your own parents, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been treated as an outcast, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever made a decision based on an opinion, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been labeled, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been stuck in the middle of a love triangle, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been heartbroken, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever cried yourself to sleep, it wasn’t your fault. As you suffered and grew up, your soul got stained, your heart got shattered and your body paralyzed, which drove you into a deep state of slow sleep. As you opened your eyes, the atrocities of your past were glistening over your eyes and you knew, you had lost yourself in a place of utter darkness, but there was learning to be done in the cold dark. Like seeds of plants shaded by dirt, you twitched with the want to rise. As you grew tired of the shadows, you climbed into a world that was finally making room for light. Room for you and for all your truth. You ignited not in the light but in the distant shadows of the dark. In your chaos, you found clarity. In your suffering, you found purpose. You didn’t ignore the pain. You gave it reason. You used it. You reveled in it. As you began your journey to redefine yourself in misery and pain, your heart grew fonder but you didn’t give up. As stones of suffering came to dance, your feet took flight, the sun tried to burn you down, but God threw a shadow over the horizon and you saw a ray of hope and chased your way over the mightiest slopes. For a long time, you thought being different was a negative thing; but as you grew older, you started to realize that you were born to stand out, not blend in. Now, when people put a label on you, you find comfort in your true self because, in the end, you are proud to be who you’re. You’re a survivor. You and I come from completely different places, our world is a parallel space and we speak different languages, but one thing I’m sure of is that my heart beats the same as yours. At end of the day, we’re all meant to be who we are; Our True Selves.

If you’ve ever suffered the accusations of people who objectified you as an emblem of darkness, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been haunted by the opinions of your friends, it wasn’t your fault. If they’ve ever assumed the worst of you, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been judged by your own parents, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been treated as an outcast, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever made a decision based on an opinion, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been labeled, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been stuck in the middle of a love triangle, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been heartbroken, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever cried yourself to sleep, it wasn’t your fault. As you suffered and grew up, your soul got stained, your heart got shattered and your body paralyzed, which drove you into a deep state of slow sleep. As you opened your eyes, the atrocities of your past were glistening over your eyes and you knew, you had lost yourself in a place of utter darkness, but there was learning to be done in the cold dark. Like seeds of plants shaded by dirt, you twitched with the want to rise. As you grew tired of the shadows, you climbed into a world that was finally making room for light. Room for you and for all your truth. You ignited not in the light but in the distant shadows of the dark. In your chaos, you found clarity. In your suffering, you found purpose. You didn’t ignore the pain. You gave it reason. You used it. You reveled in it. As you began your journey to redefine yourself in misery and pain, your heart grew fonder but you didn’t give up. As stones of suffering came to dance, your feet took flight, the sun tried to burn you down, but God threw a shadow over the horizon and you saw a ray of hope and chased your way over the mightiest slopes. For a long time, you thought being different was a negative thing; but as you grew older, you started to realize that you were born to stand out, not blend in. Now, when people put a label on you, you find comfort in your true self because, in the end, you are proud to be who you’re. You’re a survivor. You and I come from completely different places, our world is a parallel space and we speak different languages, but one thing I’m sure of is that my heart beats the same as yours. At end of the day, we’re all meant to be who we are; Our True Selves.

If you’ve ever suffered the accusations of people who objectified you as an emblem of darkness, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been haunted by the opinions of your friends, it wasn’t your fault. If they’ve ever assumed the worst of you, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been judged by your own parents, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been treated as an outcast, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever made a decision based on an opinion, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been labeled, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been stuck in the middle of a love triangle, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever been heartbroken, it wasn’t your fault. If you’ve ever cried yourself to sleep, it wasn’t your fault. As you suffered and grew up, your soul got stained, your heart got shattered and your body paralyzed, which drove you into a deep state of slow sleep. As you opened your eyes, the atrocities of your past were glistening over your eyes and you knew, you had lost yourself in a place of utter darkness, but there was learning to be done in the cold dark. Like seeds of plants shaded by dirt, you twitched with the want to rise. As you grew tired of the shadows, you climbed into a world that was finally making room for light. Room for you and for all your truth. You ignited not in the light but in the distant shadows of the dark. In your chaos, you found clarity. In your suffering, you found purpose. You didn’t ignore the pain. You gave it reason. You used it. You reveled in it. As you began your journey to redefine yourself in misery and pain, your heart grew fonder but you didn’t give up. As stones of suffering came to dance, your feet took flight, the sun tried to burn you down, but God threw a shadow over the horizon and you saw a ray of hope and chased your way over the mightiest slopes. For a long time, you thought being different was a negative thing; but as you grew older, you started to realize that you were born to stand out, not blend in. Now, when people put a label on you, you find comfort in your true self because, in the end, you are proud to be who you’re. You’re a survivor. You and I come from completely different places, our world is a parallel space and we speak different languages, but one thing I’m sure of is that my heart beats the same as yours. At end of the day, we’re all meant to be who we are; Our True Selves.

Niobe earned the ire of the gods by bragging about her seven lovely daughters and seven “handsome sons—whom the easily offended Olympians soon slaughtered for her impertinence. Tantalus, Niobe’s father, killed his own son and served him at a royal banquet. As punishment, Tantalus had to stand for all eternity up to his neck in a river, with a branch loaded with apples dangling above his nose. Whenever he tried to eat or drink, however, the fruit would be blown away beyond his grasp or the water would recede. Still, while elusiveness and loss tortured Tantalus and Niobe, it is actually a surfeit of their namesake elements that has decimated central Africa. There’s a good chance you have tantalum or niobium in your pocket right now. Like their periodic table neighbors, both are dense, heat-resistant, noncorrosive metals that hold a charge well—qualities that make them vital for compact cell phones. In the mid-1990s cell phone designers started demanding both metals, especially tantalum, from the world’s largest supplier, the Democratic Republic of Congo, then called Zaire. Congo sits next to Rwanda in central Africa, and most of us probably remember the Rwandan butchery of the 1990s. But none of us likely remembers the day in 1996 when the ousted Rwandan government of ethnic Hutus spilled into Congo seeking “refuge. At the time it seemed just to extend the Rwandan conflict a few miles west, but in retrospect it was a brush fire blown right into a decade of accumulated racial kindling. Eventually, nine countries and two hundred ethnic tribes, each with its own ancient alliances and unsettled grudges, were warring in the dense jungles. Nonetheless, if only major armies had been involved, the Congo conflict likely would have petered out. Larger than Alaska and dense as Brazil, Congo is even less accessible than either by roads, meaning it’s not ideal for waging a protracted war. Plus, poor villagers can’t afford to go off and fight unless there’s money at stake. Enter tantalum, niobium, and cellular technology. Now, I don’t mean to impute direct blame. Clearly, cell phones didn’t cause the war—hatred and grudges did. But just as clearly, the infusion of cash perpetuated the brawl. Congo has 60 percent of the world’s supply of the two metals, which blend together in the ground in a mineral called coltan. Once cell phones caught on—sales rose from virtually zero in 1991 to more than a billion by 2001—the West’s hunger proved as strong as Tantalus’s, and coltan’s price grew tenfold. People purchasing ore for cell phone makers didn’t ask and didn’t care where the coltan came from, and Congolese miners had no idea what the mineral was used for, knowing only that white people paid for it and that they could use the profits to support their favorite militias. Oddly, tantalum and niobium proved so noxious because coltan was so democratic. Unlike the days when crooked Belgians ran Congo’s diamond and gold mines, no conglomerates controlled coltan, and no backhoes and dump trucks were necessary to mine it. Any commoner with a shovel and a good back could dig up whole pounds of the stuff in creek beds (it looks like thick mud). In just hours, a farmer could earn twenty times what his neighbor did all year, and as profits swelled, men abandoned their farms for prospecting. This upset Congo’s already shaky food supply, and people began hunting gorillas for meat, virtually wiping them out, as if they were so many buffalo. But gorilla deaths were nothing compared to the human atrocities. It’s not a good thing when money pours into a country with no government.

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In middle school and high school, he overcame his awkwardness by blending in with friends. Going along with the crowd was easier and more acceptable than standing out.

Its better to stand out in a crowd than blend into a crowd

Ah, Harp,’ her mother would say, smiling benignly, ‘it is a fruitless quest to try to blend in when you are created to stand out.

He took pleasure in scandalizing the moralists in his circles, arriving at soireés in the arms of paid escorts whom he dressed up for the occasion not exactly to make them blend in but to make them stand out.

The constant background noise of car horns, barking dogs, music pulsating out of apartment windows—they had all blended together in a symphony of chaos that was the trademark of city life. Then there was the unique smell of the city. The air was permeated with a persistent odor of unwashed bodies and greasy food mixed with pungent drifts of vehicle exhaust and sewage. One couldn’t discount the more pleasant aromas that also drifted over the city of fresh-brewed coffee from a cafe or the sweet smell of relish from the corner hot dog stands. But

The gelding had a broad back, making for a comfortable ride. Yedan rode at a canter. Ahead, the hills thickened with scrub, and beyond was a forest of white trees, branches like twisted bones, leaves so dark as to be almost black. Just before them and running the length of the wooded fringe rose dolmens of grey granite, their edges grooved and faces pitted with cup-shaped, ground-out depressions. Each stone was massive, twice the height of a grown man, and crowding the foot of each one that he could see were skulls. He slowed his mount, reined in a half-dozen paces from the nearest standing stone. Sat motionless, flies buzzing round the horse’s flickering ears, and studied those grisly offerings. Cold judgement was never short of pilgrims. Alas, true justice had no reason to respect secrets, as those close-fisted pilgrims had clearly discovered. A final and fatal revelation. Minute popping sounds in the air announced the approach of dread power, as the buzzing flies ignited in mid-flight, black bodies bursting like acorns in a fire. The horse shied slightly, muscles growing taut beneath Yedan, and then snorted in sudden fear. ‘Hold,’ Yedan murmured, his voice calming the beast. Those of the royal line among the Shake possessed ancient knowledge, memories thick as blood. Tales of ancient foes, sworn enemies of the uncertain Shore. More perhaps than most, the Shake rulers understood that a thing could be both one and the other, or indeed neither. Sides possessed undersides and even those terms were suspect. Language itself stuttered in the face of such complexities, such rampant subtleties of nature. In this place, however, the blended flavours of compassion were anathema to the powers that ruled. Yet the lone figure that strode out from the forest was so unexpected that Yedan Derryg grunted as if he had been punched in the chest. ‘This realm is not yours,’ he said, fighting to control his horse. ‘This land is consecrated for adjudication,’ the Forkrul Assail said. ‘I am named Repose. Give me your name, seeker, that I may know you—’ ‘Before delivering judgement upon me?’ The tall, ungainly creature, naked and weaponless, cocked his head. ‘You are not alone. You and your followers have brought discord to this land. Do not delay me—you cannot evade what hides within you. I shall be your truth.’ ‘I am Yedan Derryg.’ The Forkrul Assail frowned. ‘This yields me no ingress—why is that? How is it you block me, mortal?’ ‘I will give you that answer,’ Yedan replied, slipping down from the horse. He drew his sword. Repose stared at him. ‘Your defiance is useless.’ Yedan advanced on him. ‘Is it? But, how can you know for certain? My name yields you no purchase upon my soul. Why is that?’ ‘Explain this, mortal.’ ‘My name is meaningless. It is my title that holds my truth. My title, and my blood.’ The Forkrul Assail shifted his stance, lifting his hands. ‘One way or another, I will know you, mortal.’ ‘Yes, you will.’ Repose attacked, his hands a blur. But those deadly weapons cut empty air, as Yedan was suddenly behind the Forkrul Assail, sword chopping into the back of the creature’s elongated legs, the iron edge cutting between each leg’s two hinged knees, severing the buried tendons—Repose toppled forward, arms flailing. Yedan chopped down a second time, cutting off the Assail’s left arm. Blue, thin blood sprayed on to the ground. ‘I am Shake,’ Yedan said, raising his sword once more. ‘I am the Watch.’ The sudden hiss from Repose was shortlived, as Yedan’s sword took off the top of the Forkrul Assail’s head.

Often the girls would be unhappy with the police uniform. ‘why should we wear the men’s uniform, Maam, ? Why can’t we have something more comfortable, more suitable for us?” It is true that the uniform is designed for a man. Yet, I feel that there should not be any difference in uniform because to me the uniform is the big equaliser. “the moment we start wearing a different uniform, others will perceive us differently,’ I would tell the girls. When you are breaking into a male bastion, you must first blend in, before standing out. I hope that one day there will be so many women IPS officers that they will stop being an aberration.

In drag, the concept of “realness” doesn’t necessarily mean what you might think. For many drag artists, realness isn’t about trying to “pass”—to blend in with the crowd without notice—but rather about standing out and apart. By disrupting and shining a light on our assumptions, drag realness can expose that what is most real is in the in-between, in the blurring itself, in tearing up the playbook of gender. The realness of drag is that it heightens, dramatizes, and deviates in order to reveal—it holds up a mirror to us, showing us the gender baggage we inherit and inviting us to discard our conventions.

He lit a cigarette and blew the smoke out his nostrils as he’d watched his father do when Becker was a child. For many years he’d longed to release smoke out his nostrils like his father. While some sons pantomimed shaving while watching their old man, Becker had watched his dad smoke and exhale, memorizing the technique and the timing. And at age sixteen he’d accomplished his goal, but not without some coughing and hacking. Now he’d become an expert at nostril smoke exhalation, and he did it with a certain style. That was one of only two things he did that made him stand out a bit. In every other aspect of his life, Becker blended right into the crowd. The bland suits he wore, the low decibels of his speech, his everyman’s features, and the vacant expression in his eyes were all designed to place everyone’s attention on any location other than him.

We are meant to be bold, courageous and strong as we do the works of Jesus. We are not supposed to blend in. We are supposed to stand out.

God allows the persecution of Christians from time to time in order to grow His garden: to weed out the counterfeits who blend in and cower while, even if only visible from the heavens, the real ones stand strong and bloom.

If you want to take them on, you have to learn to blend in, not stand out.” Something about his words sat wrong in my heart, the plunk of a distant piano hitting a sour note. The voice inside me seemed to shudder with equal distaste.

Just before noon one sunny summer’s day, three bears were returning home from their morning wander. They lived in a sturdy wooden cabin, unpretentious and rustic. Approaching the house he’d built with his own paws, Daddy Bear felt a sense of satisfaction. The residence blended in with the forest rather than standing out from it. All the construction materials had been ethically sourced. The wood came from trees felled by storms. A thick layer of turf on the roof provided insulation in winter and kept the cabin cool in summer. In addition to being practical, the turf looked pretty. Its grass sprouted straight up like hair jutting from a mythic head. A little too big to be quaint, yet a little too small to be showoffish, the house was just right. And just right was the way Daddy Bear liked things.

When it came to my choices, I tried to be somewhat unpredictable, to prevent anyone from ascribing any sort of message to what I wore. It was a thin line to walk. I was supposed to stand out without overshadowing others, to blend in but not fade away. As a black woman, too, I knew I’d be criticized if I was perceived as being showy and high-end, and I’d also be criticized if I was too casual. So I mixed it up. I’d match a Michael Kors skirt with a T-shirt from Gap. I wore something from Target one day and Diane von Furstenberg the next.

it is a fruitless quest to try to blend in when you are created to stand out.

speed. And you blend conceptually with your words. But as natural as it is to blend with people that you like or with people that you share an objective with, it is equally natural not to blend with people whom you perceive as difficult. And the failure to blend has serious consequences because without blending, the differences between you become the basis for conflict.

Blending always precedes redirecting, whether you’re listening to understand or speaking to be understood. Only after establishing some rapport with your difficult people through blending will you be able to redirect the interaction and change the trajectory toward a worthwhile outcome.

One way to take charge with difficult people in a poisoned atmosphere is to purposely blend with their body posture, facial expressions, and degree of animation. Blending sends the signal that “I’m with you! I’m not the enemy! I’m interested in what you say and do!

If you fail to blend with other people’s voice volume and speed, you will probably end up talking to yourself or dealing with serious misunderstanding.

Your Goal: Listen to Understand ACTION PLAN 1. Blend visibly and audibly. 2. Backtrack some of the person’s own words. 3. Clarify the meaning, intent, and criteria. 4. Summarize what you’ve heard. 5. Confirm to find out if you got it right.

Ask yourself what positive purpose might be behind people’s communications or behaviors, and acknowledge it. If you are not sure about the positive intent, just make something up. Even if the intent you try to blend with isn’t true, you can still get a good response and create rapport.

Nadine walked with calm assurance toward Crean’s office. She looked the part of the professional she tried to be and, if necessary, she could utilize very effective masking techniques. Before she studied psychology, she had become a social chameleon. She didn’t stand out. She blended in groups. Mimicked reactions. Copied expressions. Nothing too special. Nothing too odd. Hiding among normal people, like her mother had done for so long. The good ones, the successful ones, always did.

No! Not the ice cream stand, with its little item frames featuring all eight flavors! Not that! Anything but that! Ransack my bedroom, fine! Blow up our fountain, okay! Just don’t touch that cute little hut made out of fence and blocks of wood! With it gone, I’d no longer be able to enjoy diamond ore chunk, with its perfect texture, its fantastic consistency, and a blend of flavors so utterly amazing it should count as enchanted food! How could they destroy that?! How could they?! They might be monsters, but even they have limits, right? Even they should know where to draw the line!

So that's the Wanmono Soup made by Satoshi Isshiki... ... the so-called Master of Aggressive Japanese Cuisine." "Look how beautifully it's plated! Even the ingredient colors are coordinated!" "A true work of art!" "Just looking at it sucks me in." "But the taste... how does it taste?! Is it as delicious as it is gorgeous?!" "Just one sip of the broth was enough to send a shock wave surging through my body. Delicately constructing a wanmono soup out of just hare and konbu is difficult enough. But to incorporate clam stock as well?! And so seamlessly too!" "Clams?!" "Wait, the soup broth is hare... and also clam?! How does that even work?!" "There are four major components of a proper wanmono soup. Suiji --- the broth that forms the backbone of the dish Sukuchi --- the ingredients that accent the dish's aroma Wandane --- the main ingredient of the soup Wanzuma --- the side ingredients that complement the wandane Blending the hare and clam stocks in a seven-to-three ratio infused the suiji broth with the mellow, salty body of the clams... ... putting a new, delicious spin on the traditional wanmono soup broth! And the fresh, tangy aroma of yuzu fruit in the suikuchi accent neatly underscores that flavor, making it stand out all the more! With this, he's done nothing short of innovatively reinventing a traditional Japanese soup stock!

Sometimes I think you're not being the best you can be,” she started, turning her attention back to me. “Sometimes it seems like you want to blend in with everyone else and be ordinary, but you're not ordinary. You stand out in a crowd, you always have. It's not that you don't fit, honey. You're just too dumb sometimes to see that you're the center piece, and the rest of us are trying to fit around you.