Life on Liquids: I feel Awash.

How many of us in the West experience genuine hunger, the gnawing, persistant pain that accompanies us when we are uncertain where our next meal will come from if it comes at all? We are awash in food. Stroll down an avenue in Washington, D.C. and there are vending carts on every corner staffed by immigrants from Viet Nam, Africa, Egypt, festooned with brightly-packaged goodies. It lends our stately avenues the atmosphere of the midway, which is more true to the soul of the place than suggested by the imposing, weighty, sombre, architecture that shelters the governing establishment. The moment our stomach whimpers, we rush to appease it because food is plentful and hardly dear.
Imagine what it was like in earlier times when food--even junk food- was not easily accesible. You can appreciate the desperation of hunger through books if you are a careful, immaginative reader. I can get lost in the thicket of words--so submerged that the events in the real world around me, like the arrival of my Metro train at my destination go totaly unnoticed.
For experiences of hunger, I'd first suggest Patrick O'Brian's brilliant Master and Commander-- his first volume or overature of a series that is as majestic and monumental as a Bethoven Symphoney. Here we meet the brilliant Stephen Maturin, a doctor and naturalist gifted with uncommon curiosity and reasoning abilities (based on O'Brian himself) who is unemployed at the moment and famished. Try reading the first few chapters on an empty stomach. You become fast friends with Stephen!
University English Departments (or History Departments) should teach courses in historic fiction. O'Brien would be taught alongside Shakespeare. Will is the undisputed master, of course, a man who was no small gift from the heavens, an Einstein of the written word, and so on. O'Brian is as skilled a writer--I would venture more skilled a writer than Charles Dickens. See for yourself.
If you don't lie O'Brian and would prefer a more contemporary story with fine plotting and fine psychological drama if not the highest caliber of writing, try King Rat by James Clavell, which describes life in a Japanese-administered, prisoner-run detention camp near Singapore during WW2.
My liquid diet, which is richer in carbs than I prefer because I bought some Hunt pre-packaged pudding snaks, 23 grams of carbs each, had not been damaging after all. I weighed 179 on the medical-grade scale this a.m.
I was more famished than usual upon airising--I surmise it is the sugars. One day to go on this ghastly regime.
I went to an outdoor concert last night and listened to the Alexandria Symphony. New to the city, I was unaware we had one! They were quite good, commensurate with one I heard in Hartford not to long ago though certainly not as grand as the BSO.
This morning as I peck away with five fingers(my style. my hands are complete)I've had a cup of hot tea, with the blue stuff for sweetener. Red Rose is my preferred brand. I shall have some yogurt now, also sweetened with the blue stuff (refers to packaging of the white powder.) For lunch, 15 ounces of plain yogurt, sweetened with blue stuff and a pinch of Vanilla extract. No dinner. I feel like Stephen.