My other brother Larry Darrell?

Sometimes when Eater X wakes up he'll wonder where the heck he is even though he really hasn't gone anywhere. Sometimes before Eater X opens his eyes he'll think that he's still in his boyhood bed in his boyhood bedroom in his boyhood home in Simsbury, CT. Sometimes seconds later but still before he's opened his eyes, he'll have only the faintest idea that he's actually downstairs in his bigger bed in the bedroom of his New York City apartment. But he'll keep his eyes closed anyway so that he can further explore the moment, trying to understand what it is about his particular position, his particular direction, the particular temperature and moisture and smell of the air, and the particular arrangement of the rays of sunlight shining through his eyelids that remind him so much of a place he last slept years ago. And he won't quite figure things out. He'll just smile respectfully and with his eyes still closed at the power of his mind to transport his soul so vividly from one place to another.

Sometimes after Eater X has just spoken to his mom on the telephone, he'll think back to his freshman year of college and to how she fought off a very advanced case of cancer and lived. Or he'll think back to his junior year of college, two years later, when an aneurysm burst in her brain and nearly killed her. She shouldn't have even made it to the hospital that day, and she shouldn't have survived the aneurysm even after the doctors began working on her, but she did. Eater X will remember what his mom told him then about visualization and positive thought and about the roles they played in her survival, and he'll marvel not only at her spirit but at the power of the mind to affect something physical in those who believe that it can. His mom may seem kooky at times to him and his sister, and they may tell her on occasion that she is, but they're only teasing her. She's not a fool. She knows things and suspects things that deserve to be further explored.

She's one of the reasons that Eater X is shifting his focus and changing his game. Whereas as in the past Eater X's approach to life and to competitive eating was always decidedly Western and physical, he's beginning to realize that his future may lie in something more Eastern and intangible.

What exactly does that mean? I guess only Eater X knows, and he hasn't given me much more than a vague explanation.

"I don't know, Whaler," he said to me, as the two of us stood in his kitchen the other night spitting mouthfuls of chewed up Total cereal onto a hot skillet in a vain attempt to create a low-fat, high-fiber tortilla with 100% of the recommended daily allowance of 12 essential vitamins and minerals. "I guess it means living life hard, taking it out and playing with it instead of just putting it on a shelf and admiring it from a safe distance like it's some sort of fucking artifact; savoring every story, every sensation, every emotion, and wallowing in some of them a bit too long as long as I think that I'm learning from them. But I really don't know. I just know that there's something bigger out there, a level of understanding that can help me to live life better and fuller. The wisest people, the people I admire most, know something about life that I don't. I can hear it in their voices. I can see it in their eyes. And I think they know it because they never stopped learning and exploring themselves."

It sounds absurd, at least a little bit, to think that Eater X can eat more hot dogs because he tells his mind to tell his body to do so, but I wonder if maybe he's right. Hasn't he already witnessed the power of mind over matter? And hasn't he heard a very credible testimonial? I think Eater X thinks he has.

So if you see Eater X coming out of somebody's church one day or meditating in the park with a sherpa, or if you see him crawling down the street drunk or high or (gasp) even sober, or if you see him in the library reading a book that hasn't been read in centuries, don't think to yourself that he's lost and confused and wasting his time. Think instead that he's doing his homework and busy finding his way.