"James Otis" is not yet a pseudonym employed by a coalition of passionate dilettantes. He remains a real person, an amalgam of spirit and flesh. He loves dark chocolate, the prose of Samuel Johnson and the music of Shostakovich. He cannot abide flavored coffees, Hemingway or Richard Strauss. Acutely aware of binocular vision, at the age of seven he undertook a program of eye exercises to strengthen the facility. At eleven, meditating on numbers, he succeeded in visualizing 23 distinct points. While a teenager, Otis blindfolded himself, seeing not a photon for nine days. Shortly thereafter he...
