Twenty years before, James had given
lectures on exoplanets at Meiji U
in Tokyo, which was a kind of heaven
for him. What particularly drew
him to it was how this mosaic
of simulacra was basic-
ally and utterly itself: a French cafe
detailed down to a Cinzano ashtray
replete with aproned garçon
(sauf qu’il ne parle pas français);
bookshops in a language there was no way
to read. James loved the foreign.
Tokyo was a place to find it within,
either the foreign itself, or its twin.
A young colleague at Meiji,
whom he told he’d once tried
Aikido, asked him if he’d maybe
enjoy the service of a personal guide
to the headquarters, the Hombu Dojo.
James would never have gone solo.
He was eternally grateful he did.
Aikido took, so amid
his abtruse models of planetary
formation, birth and death there arose
a paradigm of throws and blows
turning around balance and ki.
One reason James liked linked verse:
its goal was to persuade, not coerce.
*
The Old Observatory is a renga-fiction about James, a retiring professor of astronomy.
https://alteritas.net/pastis/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Blueprint-for-a-Benji.pdf