Nested Block Quotes

The unusual thing about quiet is that when you seek it, it is almost impossible to achieve. When you strive for quiet, you become impatient, and impatience is itself a noiseless noise. You can block every superficial sound, but, with each new layer extinguished, a next rises up, finer and more entrapping, until you arrive at last in the infinite attitude of your own riotous mind. Inside is where all the memories last like wells, and the unspoken wishes like golden buds, and the pain that you keep, lingering and implicit, staying inside, nesting inside, articulating, articulating, through to the day you die. (p. 240)

Head held high, she stepped toward the block and sank to her knees, and it was then that Akiva started to scream. His voice soared over the pandemonium - a scream to scour the souls of all gathered, a sound to drive ghosts from their nests.

You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel or the laughing bee on a stalk of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk in school. There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break tomorrow. Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry. What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost. And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.

Out along the dim six-o’clock street, I saw leafless trees standing, striking the sidewalk there like wooden lightning, concrete split apart where they hit, all in a fenced-in ring. An iron line of pickets stuck out of the ground along the front of a tangleweed yard, and on back was a big frame house with a porch, leaning a rickety shoulder hard into the wind so’s not to be sent tumbling away a couple of blocks like an empty cardboard grocery box.

Once she was standing by her locker and her puka shells broke and scattered and she made a joke about it but he could tell she was upset. He wanted to buy her some more. He wanted to give her a million strands of little nesting polished shells, and tropical flowers and ice creams and lemonades and a pale blue surfboard to teach her to surf on and anything else she wanted. Instead he let his checkered Vans step on one of the rolling shells and crush it.

The cases described in this section (The Fear of Being) may seem extreme, but I have become convinced that they are not as uncommon as one would think. Beneath the seemingly rational exterior of our lives is a fear of insanity. We dare not question the values by which we live or rebel against the roles we play for fear of putting our sanity into doubt. We are like the inmates of a mental institution who must accept its inhumanity and insensitivity as caring and knowledgeableness if they hope to be regarded as sane enough to leave. The question who is sane and who is crazy was the theme of the novel One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. The question, what is sanity? was clearly asked in the play Equus. The idea that much of what we do is insane and that if we want to be sane, we must let ourselves go crazy has been strongly advanced by R.D. Laing. In the preface to the Pelican edition of his book The Divided Self, Laing writes: "In the context of our present pervasive madness that we call normality, sanity, freedom, all of our frames of reference are ambiguous and equivocal." And in the same preface: "Thus I would wish to emphasize that our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities; that many of us are only too successful in acquiring a false self to adapt to false realities." Wilhelm Reich had a somewhat similar view of present-day human behavior. Thus Reich says, "Homo normalis blocks off entirely the perception of basic orgonotic functioning by means of rigid armoring; in the schizophrenic, on the other hand, the armoring practically breaks down and thus the biosystem is flooded with deep experiences from the biophysical core with which it cannot cope." The "deep experiences" to which Reich refers are the pleasurable streaming sensations associated with intense excitation that is mainly sexual in nature. The schizophrenic cannot cope with these sensations because his body is too contracted to tolerate the charge. Unable to "block" the excitation or reduce it as a neurotic can, and unable to "stand" the charge, the schizophrenic is literally "driven crazy." But the neurotic does not escape so easily either. He avoids insanity by blocking the excitation, that is, by reducing it to a point where there is no danger of explosion, or bursting. In effect the neurotic undergoes a psychological castration. However, the potential for explosive release is still present in his body, although it is rigidly guarded as if it were a bomb. The neurotic is on guard against himself, terrified to let go of his defenses and allow his feelings free expression. Having become, as Reich calls him, "homo normalis," having bartered his freedom and ecstasy for the security of being "well adjusted," he sees the alternative as "crazy." And in a sense he is right. Without going "crazy," without becoming "mad," so mad that he could kill, it is impossible to give up the defenses that protect him in the same way that a mental institution protects its inmates from self-destruction and the destruction of others.

Fear might stop some people from committing murder, but he knew for certain fear was what drove most people to kill. It was what nested below all the other emotions. It was what twisted and turned the other emotions into something sick. It was an alchemist and could turn daylight into night, joy into despair. Fear, once taken root, blocked the sun. And Gamache knew what grew in that darkness. He searched for it every day.

There were millions of such families anxious only for peace and quiet in their own little nests. These were the mounting blocks by which the criminals climbed to power and kept it.

talks to anyone who passes by, and all the while his hands move over a block of wood, a small knife nested in one palm. He shaves at the surface with all the steady ease of someone peeling an apple, ribbons falling between his fingers. Adeline has always loved to watch him work, to see the figures take shape, as if they were there all along,

I'm a basic boneless chicken, yes, I have no bones inside, I'm without a trace of rib cage, yet I hold myself with pride, other hens appear offended by my total lack of bones, they discuss me impolitely in derogatory tones. I am absolutely boneless, I am boneless through and through, I have neither neck nor thighbones, and my back is boneless too, and I haven't got a wishbone, not a bone within my breast, so I rarely care to travel from the comfort of my nest. I have feathers fine and fluffy, I have lovely little wings, but I lack the superstructure to support these splendid things. Since a chicken finds it tricky to parade on boneless legs, I stick closely to the hen house, laying little scrambled eggs.

The cars on the block were already hidden under a sodden layer of white. People were shoveling their walks and

But more important, he also spotted an encrypted block of code that turned out to be Stuxnet’s mother lode—a large .DLL file (dynamic link library) that contained about three dozen other .DLLs and components inside, all wrapped together in layers of encryption like Russian nesting dolls.

What treasures lay inside! Yes, here were the colors that she had asked for: red, pink, yellow, blue, green, black- all in powder form, of course, not like the one or two bottles of liquid food color that were available at the Lebanese supermarket in town; those were not at all modern- some big blocks of marzipan, and, as always, June had included some new things for Angel to try. This time there were three tubes that looked rather like thick pens. She picked one upend examined it: written along its length were the words 'Gateau Graffito,' and underneath, written in uppercase letters, was the word 'red.' Reaching for the other two pens- one marked 'green' and the other 'black'- she saw a small printed sheet lying at the bottom of the bubblewrap nest. It explained that these pens were filled with food color, and offered a picture showing how they could be used to write fine lines or thick lines, depending on how you held them. It also guaranteed that the contents were kosher. Eh, now her cakes were going to be more beautiful than ever!

One of the masked women imitates the sounds she hears and the ubiquitous tune, as she sways and runs her hand through her hair. A rutting mare, a slender block of ice, warm for others but not for herself, she seems to be split in two: fire from the waist down, straight lines above. Growing more sensual by the minute, more labile and smiling, her mask redder, flame is her nest, the flash of her eyes stony gray.

My doubts fall away and leave me weightless and whole. I turn. I look. I see the frame of my face in another’s. I see my eyes staring back at me. It’s her. It is her. She is lovely. She is delicate. She is a familiar mix of me. (p. 301) They’re expecting Aimee. I’m not Aimee. I can’t be anything like the Aimee they imagined me to be, I worried. What if I’m not as easy to love as the baby they gave away? What if this doesn’t work out? What will I tell my daughters? What will I tell myself? (p.295) Gloria wasn’t all bad; she did have days that made me want to nest in her arms and surrender to her care. The truth is, I very much wanted a mother, and most of the time I wanted her to be my mother. (p.179) I would have been good. I would have behaved. Eaten my vegetables, cleaned my room, said “please” and “thank you.” I would have made you love me. Somehow. (p. 297) We have taken our time getting to know one another. Our relationship has had the luxury of a gestation period—a block of time that nature affords to every mother and her offspring. (p. 323)

William sees it all happen again. The pain is not in the event. The subjection to it and his powerless state each time is where his anguish lies. He is unable to influence the situation, despite his desire. He sees the nest outside his house. He sees the baby bird that fell. The mother bird cries frantically for her lost chick. William knows as he approaches the chick that if he touches it his scent will linger, and the mother will reject it. Circling around the fallen creature William hopes it will flee from him, back toward the tree from which it had fallen. His presence only intensifies the creature’s fear. It speeds to his left, heading for the street. Again William tries to flank the bird, but it is too frightened to return to the nest. The chick’s mother wails vainly. William walks into the street trying to herd the bird to safety. The stop light a block away has just turned green. The driver accelerates. William moves from the car’s path and it runs over the bird. The momentum from its wake lifts the bird to the underside of the car, breaking its neck, but not killing it. William watches the bird roll helplessly. It is silent for a second, before it begins to whimper. Its contorted head dangles limply from its body. The noise is tragic. The bird’s mother hears the chick’s pain, but nothing can be done. She laments. A second speeder crushes the chick, leaving only a wet feathered spot in the street. As the cars continue to pass, only one bird is heard. A mother’s grief falls deafly on an unconcerned world.

FACING A TOUGH election, I also saw that the P5+1 and Iran were racing to a dangerous nuclear agreement that would pave Iran’s path to the bomb. Under the impending agreement, Iran would be able to freely enrich uranium within a few years. Becoming a threshold nuclear power with a nuclear arsenal, Iran would jeopardize the very existence of Israel. I had to fight this. But how could I possibly do it? The polls showed I could soon be out of office. On Friday, January 8, 2015, I received a fateful call from Ron Dermer from our embassy in Washington. He told me that Speaker of the House John Boehner had called him asking whether I would be willing to address a joint meeting of Congress on the dangers of the impending nuclear deal. It was a monumental decision. This would not just be another speech. I would be going into the lion’s den in Washington to challenge a sitting American president. Stirring up such a hornets’ nest on the eve of an Israeli election could have devastating political consequences. The nuclear deal was Obama’s top priority. Blocking it was my top priority. Placing this conflict on such a global stage would put me on a head-on collision course with the president of the United States. Yet I was given the opportunity to speak before Congress and the American people on a matter vital to Israel’s very survival. I felt the pull of history. Such an invitation could not be declined. “The answer is yes, in principle,” I said to Ron. That still left me time to think everything through. Dermer began working on the details with Boehner. We settled on March 3 as the date of the speech, to coincide with AIPAC’s annual conference. I would have six weeks to prepare the most important speech of my life. Word spread that I would be giving the speech just a few days after we picked the date, and a chorus of condemnation erupted like a volcano. Statements like “Netanyahu is destroying our alliance with the United States” and “an act of enormous irresponsibility” flooded the press, the media, and the Knesset. In the US, Dermer personally met with dozens of Democratic

This neighborhood was mine first. I walked each block twice: drunk, then sober. I lived every day with legs and headphones. It had snowed the night I ran down Lorimer and swore I’d stop at nothing. My love, he had died. What was I supposed to do? I regret nothing. Sometimes I feel washed up as paper. You’re three years away. But then I dance down Graham and the trees are the color of champagne and I remember— There are things I like about heartbreak, too, how it needs a good soundtrack. The way I catch a man’s gaze on the L and don’t look away first. Losing something is just revising it. After this love there will be more love. My body rising from a nest of sheets to pick up a stranger’s MetroCard. I regret nothing. Not the bar across the street from my apartment; I was still late. Not the shared bathroom in Barcelona, not the red-eyes, not the songs about black coats and Omaha. I lie about everything but not this. You were every streetlamp that winter. You held the crown of my head and for once I won’t show you what I’ve made. I regret nothing. Your mother and your Maine. Your wet hair in my lap after that first shower. The clinic and how I cried for a week afterwards. How we never chose the language we spoke. You wrote me a single poem and in it you were the dog and I the fire. Remember the courthouse? The anniversary song. Those goddamn Kmart towels. I loved them, when did we throw them away? Tomorrow I’ll write down everything we’ve done to each other and fill the bathtub with water. I’ll burn each piece of paper down to silt. And if it doesn’t work, I’ll do it again. And again and again and— — Hala Alyan, “Object Permanence

We start with a next-generation miso soup: Kyoto's famous sweet white miso whisked with dashi made from lobster shells, with large chunks of tender claw meat and wilted spinach bobbing on the soup's surface. The son takes a cube of topflight Wagyu off the grill, charred on the outside, rare in the center, and swaddles it with green onions and a scoop of melting sea urchin- a surf-and-turf to end all others. The father lays down a gorgeous ceramic plate with a poem painted on its surface. "From the sixteenth century," he tells us, then goes about constructing the dish with his son, piece by piece: First, a chunk of tilefish wrapped around a grilled matsutake mushroom stem. Then a thick triangle of grilled mushroom cap, plus another grilled stem the size of a D-sized battery, topped with mushroom miso. A pickled ginger shoot, a few tender soybeans, and the crowning touch, the tilefish skin, separated from its body and fried into a ripple wave of crunch. The rice course arrives in a small bamboo steamer. The young chef works quickly. He slices curtains of tuna belly from a massive, fat-streaked block, dips it briefly in house-made soy sauce, then lays it on the rice. Over the top he spoons a sauce of seaweed and crushed sesame seeds just as the tuna fat begins to melt into the grains below. A round of tempura comes next: a harvest moon of creamy pumpkin, a gold nugget of blowfish capped with a translucent daikon sauce, and finally a soft, custardy chunk of salmon liver, intensely fatty with a bitter edge, a flavor that I've never tasted before. The last savory course comes in a large ice block carved into the shape of a bowl. Inside, a nest of soba noodles tinted green with powdered matcha floating in a dashi charged with citrus and topped with a false quail egg, the white fashioned from grated daikon.

Colette"s "My Mother's House" and "Sido" After seeing the movie "Colette" I felt so sad that it didn't even touch the living spirit of her that exists in her writing. 'What are you doing with that bucket, mother? Couldn't you wait until Josephine (the househelp) arrives?' "And out I hurried. But the fire was already blazing, fed with dry wood. The milk was boiling on the blue-tiled charcoal stove. Nearby, a bar of chocolate was melting in a little water for my breakfast, and, seated squarely in her cane armchair, my mother was grinding the fragrant coffee which she roasted herself. The morning hours were always kind to her. She wore their rosy colours in her cheeks. Flushed with a brief return to health, she would gaze at the rising sun, while the church bell rang for early Mass, and rejoice at having tasted, while we still slept, so many forbidden fruits. "The forbidden fruits were the over-heavy bucket drawn up from the well, the firewood split with a billhook on an oaken block, the spade, the mattock, and above all the double steps propped against the gable-windows of the attic, the flowery spikes of the too-tall lilacs, the dizzy cat that had to be rescued from the ridge of the roof. All the accomplices of her old existence as a plump and sturdy little woman, all the minor rustic divinities who once obeyed her and made her so proud of doing without servants, now assumed the appearance and position of adversaries. But they reckoned without that love of combat which my mother was to keep till the end of her life. At seventy-one dawn still found her undaunted, if not always undamaged. Burnt by fire, cut with the pruning knife, soaked by melting snow or spilt water, she had always managed to enjoy her best moments of independence before the earliest risers had opened their shutters. She was able to tell us of the cats' awakening, of what was going on in the nests, of news gleaned, together with the morning's milk and the warm loaf, from the milkmaid and the baker's girl, the record in fact of the birth of a new day.

Oh, my name is Mr. Cookie Face And I am here to flow Singing hip-hop songs Is what I know Now, gather ‘round And listen to this Because if you ignore my words You’ll get hit with my fist Because I’m a hip-hop master And I’m crafting a sick beat I can’t rap any faster Because then I’ll need to eat Creepers, skeletons, and zombies all know it I’m the Man and I don’t need to show it Haters try to flex But won’t block my success Rhymes flow through my brain Like honey in a bee’s nest Mr. Cookie Face ain’t no dessert Best back away or You gonna get hurt.

Over the years Yancy had conjured many irrational revenge fantasies about Johnny Mendez. For a time he considered seducing Mendez’s wife until he realized he’d be doing Mendez a huge favor. Mrs. Mendez was an unbearable harridan. Her features were a riot of futile surgeries, and she laughed like a mandrill on PCP. Yancy once bought her a margarita at the InterContinental, and for two solid weeks he’d slept with the lights on. Now he was parked down the block from the Mendez marital nest. A fat Siamese was primping on the hood of the Lexus. Yancy assumed the animal belonged to Mendez, who seemed like a total cat person. The man’s inability to control K-9 candidates was further evidence.

The bee flew past, buzzing loudly. They could feel the wind from its wings as it zoomed into the bee nest. Kate furrowed her brow. “I don’t know, they seem to ignore us like regular bees would.”  “Yeah,” Jack said, “they are bee-having normally.”  Kate giggled. “Bee-hiving normally.”  “But they DO have red eyes,” Mom said, “maybe they’ve been bee-witched!”  Dad groaned at Mom. “You too?” “What's wrong hub-bee?” Mom asked with a smirk.  Dad rolled his eyes. “No more please!”  “What?” Mom said, “can’t you tell that I’ve POLLEN in love with you?”  Dad covered his ears, and the kids laughed.  Mom continued. “Because you’re my honey.”  Dad cringed again. “Dad,” Jack said, “if you don’t like her jokes tell her to buzz off.”  Kate laughed. “Yeah, maybe you guys aren't in the... HONEY-moon phase anymore.”  “Don’t be a bay-bee,” Mom said to Dad, “bee positive!”  “AAAH!” Dad yelled. “Stop, stop!”  “What’s wrong?” Mom asked, “Do these jokes sting?”  Jack and Kate cracked up and even Mom started laughing her head off while Dad stood there with his hands over his ears saying, “Lalala! I can’t hear you!” When he noticed they had all stopped talking, he took his hands down. “Finally. You guys were bee-ing annoying.” They had a final laugh, then walked closer to the bee nest, to get a better look. Mom tapped Dad on the shoulder. “Do you like my hair today?”  Dad looked confused for a moment. “Uh... yes? It's very nice. You always look nice.”  Mom smiled at him. “Thank you dear, I just wanted to know if I needed to honeycomb it.

Fear might stop some people from committing murder, but he knew for certain fear was what drove most people to kill. It was what nested below all the other emotions. It was what twisted and turned the other emotions into something sick. It was an alchemist and could turn daylight into night, joy into despair. Fear, once taken root, blocked the sun.

J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 17 Continued JONAS AND JAMES (SINGING) “O come all ye faithful. Joyful and triumphant. O come ye, o come ye to Bethlehem. Come and behold him. Born the king of angels. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. Christ the lord.” “Sing, choirs of angels, Sing in exultations. Sing, all ye citizens of heavn above; Glory to god, Glory in the highest. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him. O come let us adore him, Christ the lord!” An occasional passer-by dropped a coin into the cup held by the littlest Nicholas. Thorn tipped his hat to them, trying to keep his greedy looks to a minimum. “Sing loudly my little scalawags. We’ve only a few blocks to go of skullduggery. Then you’ll have hot potato soup before a warm fire.” The Nicholas boys sang louder as they shivered from the falling snow and the wind that seemed to cut right through their shabby clothes, to their very souls. A wicked smile spread over the face of the villainous Mr. Thorn, as he heard the clink of a coin topple into the cup. “That’s it little alley muffins, shiver more it’s good for business.” His evil chuckle automatically followed and he had to stifle it. They trudged on, a few coins added to the coffer from smiling patrons. J. Edgerton/ The Spirit of Christmas Page 18 Mr. Angel continued to follow them unobserved, darting into a doorway as Mr. Thorn glanced slyly behind him, like a common criminal but there was nothing common about him. They paused before the Gotham Orphanage that rose up with its cold stone presence and its’ weathered sign. Thorn’s deep voice echoed as ominous as the sight before them, “Gotham Orphanage, home sweet home! A shelter for wayward boys and girls and a nest to us all!” He slyly drew a coin from his pocket, and twirled it through his fingers. Weather faced Thorn then bit down on the rusty coin, to make sure that it was real. He then deposited all of the coin into the inner pocket of his coat, with an evil chuckle. IV. “GOTHAM ORPHANAGE” “Now never you mind about the goings on of my business. You just mind your own. Now off with ya. Get into the hall to prepare for dinner, such as it is,” Thorn’s words echoed behind them. “And not a word to anyone of my business or you’ll see the back of me hand.” He pushed the boy toward the dingy stone building that was their torment and their shelter. The tall Toymaker glanced after them and then trod cautiously towards Gotham Orphanage. Jonas and James paced along the cracked stone pathway and up the front steps of the main entryway, that towered in cold stone before them. Thorn ushered the boys through the weathered front door to Gotham’s Orphanage. Mr. Angel paced after them and paused, unobserved, near the entrance. As they trudged across the worn hard wood floors of Gotham Orphanage, gala Irish music was heard coming from the main hall of building. Thorn herded the boys into the main hall of the orphanage that was filled with every size and make of both orphan boys and girls seated quietly at tables, eating their dinner. Then he turned with an evil look and hurriedly headed down the long hallway with the money they’ve earned. Jonas and James paced hungrily through the main hall, before a long table with a large, black kettle on top of it and loaves of different types of bread. They both glanced back at a small makeshift stage where orphans in shabby clothes sat stone faced with instruments, playing an Irish Christmas Ballad. Occasionally a sour note was heard. At a far table sat Men and Women of the Community who had come to have dinner and support the orphanage. In front of them was a small, black kettle with a sign that said “Donations”.

worked in New York my whole life—actually lived only about twenty blocks away—and had never even heard of this place, or the Freedom Tunnel, for that matter. This city never failed to surprise. Hamster got out of the car, his big eyes blinking through the tangled gray mop of his hair as he looked around. We listened to the cooing of pigeons nesting in the crevices of the raised roadbed above as we waited.

A scraping sound across the room startled her. Jake emerged from the fireplace grate. Soot covered his hands and streaked his cheek. “Want to come look?” Her mind still on the message from the teacher, she approached the fireplace. Jake made room on the hearth. “See these cracks? Crumbling mortar, loose stone. Feel this.” He reached for a river rock, and she touched it. He placed his hand over hers and wobbled the rock, but she barely felt the movement for the jolt that went through her at his touch. She jerked her hand away. His eyes scanned her face, which grew warmer by the second. She studied the blackened rocks as if mesmerized by them. “So the, uh, loosened rocks caused it to smoke?” Was that her squeaky voice? “Right.” She still felt his touch on her hand, though it was now cradled safely in her lap. She ran her other palm over it and felt the protrusion of her ring. Stephen. Wonderful, steady Stephen. She still felt Jake watching her. She was probably glowing like hot coals by now. Confound it. “So, you can, uh, patch it or something?” “Or something.” She wondered if the amusement in his tone was caused by her question or the fact that she’d ripped her hand away as if he’d jabbed her with a poker. She flickered a glance at him, but it stuck and held. The amusement slid slowly from his face, replaced by something else. Something that made her stomach feel as if it contained a batch of quickly rising dough. You just had to look. Heat radiated off his arm, inches away, and flowed over her skin. She could smell the faint scent of pine and musk. She looked away. Told her heart to stay put. Deep breaths. She sucked in a lungful of his woodsy scent. Ix-nay on the eath-bray. Meridith jumped to her feet and put distance between them. Jake cleared his throat, then leaned into the grate. “Don’t see any daylight.” Back to business. “That’s good, right?” “Not if you want to use this thing. Flue’s blocked. Debris or bird’s nest, could be anything.” “You can fix it?” He pulled out of the grate, wiping his hands on his jeans. “Sure.” Meridith hated how unsettled she felt around him. And the faulty fireplace only prolonged his presence. Why did he have to make her feel this way? Why did she have to keep reminding herself this was business? “Can

But Rita was relentless. For her, there was always one more house to look at, and every single Next One was going to be the One, the ideal location for Total Domestic Felicity, and so we would all race grumpily on to another perfectly serviceable home, only to discover that a leak in the sprinkler system in the backyard was almost certainly causing a sinkhole under the turf, or there was a lien on the second mortgage, or killer bees had been seen nesting only two blocks away. It was always something, and Rita seemed unaware that she had spun off alone into a deep neurotic fugue of perpetual rejection. And

if there really is no way you can win, you never say it out loud. You assess why, change strategy, adjust tactics, and keep fighting and pushing till either you’ve gotten a better outcome or you’ve died. Either way, you never quit when your country needs you to succeed. As Team 5 was shutting down the workup and loading up its gear, our task unit’s leadership flew to Ramadi to do what we call a predeployment site survey. Lieutenant Commander Thomas went, and so did both of our platoon officers in charge. It was quite an adventure. They were shot at every day. They were hit by IEDs. When they came home, Lieutenant Commander Thomas got us together in the briefing room and laid out the details. The general reaction from the team was, “Get ready, kids. This is gonna be one hell of a ride.” I remember sitting around the team room talking about it. Morgan had a big smile on his face. Elliott Miller, too, all 240 pounds of him, looked happy. Even Mr. Fantastic seemed at peace and relaxed, in that sober, senior chief way. We turned over in our minds the hard realities of the city. Only a couple weeks from now we would be calling Ramadi home. For six or seven months we’d be living in a hornet’s nest, picking up where Team 3 had left off. It was time for us to roll. In late September, Al Qaeda’s barbaric way of dealing with the local population was stirring some of Iraq’s Sunni tribal leaders to come over to our side. (Stuff like punishing cigarette smokers by cutting off their fingers—can you blame locals for wanting those crazies gone?) Standing up for their own people posed a serious risk, but it was easier to justify when you had five thousand American military personnel backing you up. That’ll boost your courage, for sure. We were putting that vise grip on that city, infiltrating it, and setting up shop, block by block, house by house, inch by inch. On September 29, a Team 3 platoon set out on foot from a combat outpost named Eagle’s Nest on the final operation of their six-month deployment. Located in the dangerous Ma’laab district, it wasn’t much more than a perimeter of concrete walls and concertina wire bundling up a block of residential homes. COP Eagle’s

fear was what drove most people to kill. It was what nested below all the other emotions. It was what twisted and turned the other emotions into something sick. It was an alchemist and could turn daylight into night, joy into despair. Fear, once taken root, blocked the sun. And Gamache knew what grew in that darkness. He searched for it every day.

he said, and straighten his life out. Georgie and I felt good about helping Mr. Potter reform. Lissa’s answer disappointed Georgie. “I think I’ll just go to bed and read for a while,” she said. “I’m tired, Daddy.” He yawned. “I’m pretty done in myself. We’ve had a big day.” The kitchen light went off and the bathroom light came on. In a few moments, the light in the small bedroom came on, too. Without a word, Georgie and I sneaked across the yard to Lissa’s room. We’d peeked in the windows many times before, often with pranks in mind. To make things easier, we’d hidden cinder blocks in strategic places. Standing on them, we could look in any window except the one in the bathroom, which was higher than the others. Of course, we wouldn’t have looked in the bathroom even if we could have. People deserve some privacy. Lissa was already in bed. The grumpy old men caretakers had used her room for storage, but now it was clean and neat. A green and yellow rag rug covered most of the old linoleum tile. A small desk, a narrow bookcase, and a white dresser with a mirror were crammed into the tiny space, along with Lissa’s bed, painted white to match the dresser. She’d made a little nest of pillows and quilts and stuffed animals, and she looked cozy and comfortable snuggled

The focus on the self or individual consciousness is obsessed with control, ownership, and an attitude of “Mine, Mine, Mine” that not only blocks movement towards non-localized consciousness but also generates issues and conflicts along the way. It creates a xenophobia that nests and nests.

Officers with lace on their gray sleeves and civilians in black claw-hammer coats bustled in and out of Mechanic's Hall, as if the place were an ant's nest, with some workers going forth to forage and others returning with their spoils. Luke pulled up right in front of the building. A Confederate with the two stars of a lieutenant colonel on his collar shouted, "You damned stupid nigger, what do you think you're doing, blocking the-" The words stuck in his throat when Lee got out of the carriage. He pulled himself to attention and snapped off a salute that would have done credit to a cadet from the Virginia Military Institute. Lee turned and said, "Thank you, Luke," before he returned it. The black man smiled a secret smile as he took the team around the corner to find a place to hitch it.

We've always been a country that prizes the individual over the greater group. Never forget: We were founded by a pack of men who were tired of being told what to do. Then, starting in the 1950s, pop culture began to promote the nuclear family. A thriving singular family unit seemed like a good way to encourage security amid the anxieties of a post-World War II nation. The success of just your family - over, say, the other ones on the block - became a point of pride in a country desperate to rebound after fighting two nightmarish wars in less than fifty years. Collectivism, which (surprising no one) puts value on the collective society, may have made up the building blocks of other Western nations. But it was deemed un-American. As the nuclear family became more important, the role of the family evolved. The goal of raising children isn't just to exponentially increase the amount of love and connection in the household or to add supportive new members to the wider social fabric. Instead, parents are essentially told their job is to effectively launch the nuclear families of tomorrow and to keep our individualist society spinning. Parents are encouraged to rear independently minded kids who will be self-supporting individuals by early adulthood. Not only should they be going to school and/or getting a "good" job, but also in their own homes and settings themselves up for financial success before their prefrontal cortex is finished settling. During this time, they should also be searching for a life partner to build their own nuclear family with. If someone hasn't "left the nest" by twenty-five, everyone involved is seen as a failure.So a lot of dating-age people are left feeling like lonely cogs in the machine of life, instead of valued humans who are allowed to ask for connection and empathy.

We've always been a country that prizes the individual over the greater group. Never forget: We were founded by a pack of men who were tired of being told what to do. Then, starting in the 1950s, pop culture began to promote the nuclear family. A thriving singular family unit seemed like a good way to encourage security amid the anxieties of a post-World War II nation. The success of just your family - over, say, the other ones on the block - became a point of pride in a country desperate to rebound after fighting two nightmarish wars in less than fifty years. Collectivism, which (surprising no one) puts value on the collective society, may have made up the building blocks of other Western nations. But it was deemed un-American.As the nuclear family became more important, the role of the family evolved. The goal of raising children isn't just to exponentially increase the amount of love and connection in the household or to add supportive new members to the wider social fabric. Instead, parents are essentially told their job is to effectively launch the nuclear families of tomorrow and to keep our individualist society spinning. Parents are encouraged to rear independently minded kids who will be self-supporting individuals by early adulthood. Not only should they be going to school and/or getting a "good" job, but also in their own homes and settings themselves up for financial success before their prefrontal cortex is finished settling. During this time, they should also be searching for a life partner to build their own nuclear family with. If someone hasn't "left the nest" by twenty-five, everyone involved is seen as a failure.So a lot of dating-age people are left feeling like lonely cogs in the machine of life, instead of valued humans who are allowed to ask for connection and empathy.

We've always been a country that prizes the individual over the greater group. Never forget: We were founded by a pack of men who were tired of being told what to do. Then, starting in the 1950s, pop culture began to promote the nuclear family. A thriving singular family unit seemed like a good way to encourage security amid the anxieties of a post-World War II nation. The success of just your family - over, say, the other ones on the block - became a point of pride in a country desperate to rebound after fighting two nightmarish wars in less than fifty years. Collectivism, which (surprising no one) puts value on the collective society, may have made up the building blocks of other Western nations. But it was deemed un-American.As the nuclear family became more important, the role of the family evolved. The goal of raising children isn't just to exponentially increase the amount of love and connection in the household or to add supportive new members to the wider social fabric. Instead, parents are essentially told their job is to effectively launch the nuclear families of tomorrow and to keep our individualist society spinning. Parents are encouraged to rear independently minded kids who will be self-supporting individuals by early adulthood. Not only should they be going to school and/or getting a "good" job, but also in their own homes and settings themselves up for financial success before their prefrontal cortex is finished settling. During this time, they should also be searching for a life partner to build their own nuclear family with. If someone hasn't "left the nest" by twenty-five, everyone involved is seen as a failure.So a lot of dating-age people are left feeling like lonely cogs in the machine of life, instead of valued humans who are allowed to ask for connection and empathy.

There was an area in every knot that would yield when you pushed on it hard and long enough. Anna closed her eyes, her hands delivering her to a purely tactile realm that seemed to exist outside the rest of life. It was like pushing through a wall to find a hidden chamber just beyond it. She felt the knot’s weakness, like the faint, incipient bruise on an apple, and dug her fingers in. Loosening a knot always seemed impossible until it was inevitable; Anna knew this from years of rat’s nests and cat’s cradles, shoelaces, jumping ropes, slingshots—things children on the block had always brought her to unscramble. The knot made a last clutching effort to preserve itself, its reluctance to yield making it seem almost alive. Then it surrendered, the cords loose in her hands

On October 7 the cormorants abruptly came back, hundreds of thousands of them, only to disappear after a week. On the 20th the birds returned, then vanished on the 24th. By November 7 they were back—only to bolt a few days later. In 1940 the warm waters came again. And in 1941. And they showed up earlier, at the beginning of nesting, so the birds then fled their nesting grounds and didn’t reproduce. Entire generations were not being born. Vogt was looking at a demographic collapse. But why were the Guanays fleeing? The temperature was not enough to hurt them directly; if they got hot, they could always take a swim. Nor did the birds’ returns correlate with colder weather. They suffered from no obvious disease. What was going on? The key to the puzzle, Vogt thought, was the condition of the few adults that didn’t leave the Chinchas: hungry. The remaining Guanays left every morning to hunt for fish. But they returned ever later in the day, and their crops were often empty, which meant they couldn’t feed their offspring. The lack of food, he concluded, was due to El Niño. Warmer water on the surface acted as a cap that blocked cold water from rising from the depths of the Humboldt Current, which set off a cascade of horribles: no upwelling meant no nutrients for plankton, which meant no plankton for anchovetas, which meant no anchovetas for Guanays.

The nest most durable block is Obsidian.

With six thousand miles separating me from sleep, I stumbled down into the subway at dawn and emerged on the outskirts of the Tsukiji market just as the sun broke across Tokyo Bay. Inside the market, I saw the entire ocean on display: swollen-bellied salmon, dark disks of abalone, vast armies of exotic crustaceans, conger eels so shiny and new they looked to be napping in their Styrofoam boxes. I stumbled onward to a tuna auction, where a man in a trader's cap worked his way through a hundred silver carcasses scattered across the cement floor, using a system of rapid hand motions and guttural noises unintelligible to all but a select group of tuna savants. When the auction ended, I followed one of the bodies back to its buyer's stall, where a man and his son used band saw, katana blade, cleaver, and fillet knife to work the massive fish down into sellable components: sinewy tail meat for the cheap izakaya, ruby loins for hotel restaurants, blocks of marbled belly for the high-end sushi temples. By 8:00 a.m. I was starving. First, a sushi feast, a twelve-piece procession of Tsukiji's finest- fat-frizzled bluefin, chewy surf clam, a custardy slab of Hokkaido uni- washed down with frosty glasses of Kirin. Then a bowl of warm soba from the outer market, crowned at the last second with a golden nest of vegetable tempura.

Yurik's room became their love nest. And a messier room the world had never seen. It was a jumble of dirty socks strewn about the floor, sheet music, CDs, cigarette butts, paper plates, and half-filled cans of Coke. An old Hammond organ, left behind by former tenants, stood in the hallway, blocking half the entrance and leaving only a narrow space to squeeze through. This was the room where the young couple broadened their knowledge of the world, from time to time ingesting substances that took them to other places and realities. But when Laura finished high school, and showed her parents the report card with grades that would never get her admitted into a decent college, she announced to Yurik that he had no prospects, and danced off forever. After leaving Yurik and giving him his first broken heart, she went to California. Then she flew off to the places where fearless and brainless enthusiasts of dangerous journeys fly to.

Nest box curtains provide the hens extra privacy when laying. They can also help keep drafts away from the eggs and any baby chicks a mama hen might be brooding. In addition, nest curtains can help block the view and thus keep hens from fighting and harassing each other over a box.

for all its layers and complexity, home possesses a certain universality. Our nesting dolls are built from the same DNA blocks and carbon atoms. As we close our eyes and think home, I suspect that we all feel something, that our minds entertain similar questions in seeking to define it. It’s the confidence in this universality that emboldens us to ask complete strangers where they are from.

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