Any idiot can face a crisis. It's the day to day living that wears you out.
-Anton Checkhov

My landlord upstairs says that every once in a while he fasts for five days to clear out his system. Kregg says he drinks nothing but water. After a few days he slowly introduces himself to juices again. I am wondering what it must be like to become reacquainted with juice. "Hey, old friend," I've said outloud maybe once to a tall glass of o'jay after waking up with a blaring hangover. Lately, it is the juices that have been keeping me up. Though I haven't been hungry in weeks, ultimately I've decided that one scrambled egg each day - with the just the perfect amount of dried chile peppers - might just force me into old age kicking and screaming. Sometimes I'll get take-out, usually some fried tofu or a japanese lunch box, while working at the smoke shop but in the end I just push it around a bit, consider for a moment the soup the lunch special inevitably includes and then turn again toward my juice. Still I say, "I just don't understand liquid food." Soups, chowders, even yogurts most of the time. It is as though there is a dividing line between those that eat liquid foods and those that don't. I can imagine the captain of a ship on the brink of mutiny facing this challenge. He would grab a piece of chalk, draw a line across the planks and command, "Those of might, prove you are with me by crossing this line. Those of liquids, your weakness will be the weakness of the entire ship." And I, inspecting the chalk line, might put a toe over, take it back. Put it back again. Now I am red and sweating, straddling the line and wishing there was a definite answer as to the question of whether juice is simply liquid or another true source of sustenance. Well, at least for now, I have scrambled eggs - once a liquid, always a food.