“In the ‘perception of a melody,’ we distinguish the tone given now, which we term the ‘perceived,’ from those which have gone by, which we say are ‘not perceived.’ On the other hand, we call the whole melody one that is perceived, although only the now-point actually is.” Edmund Husserl
“Let us listen to a melody, letting ourselves be swayed by it; do we not have the clear perception of a movement which is not attached to any mobility--of a change devoid of anything which changes?” Henri Bergson
Once more, I am Abraham Abramson and I am not an alcoholic. Call me Abram not Ishmael his son. I do not base all in baseball--that would be absurd! (To be exact, I base exactly one-third). Here at the Home, always anticipating the execution of the master, I lovingly learned (with some painstaking pleasure) the differences Barry discerned between the Husserlian Name That Tune and the Bergsonian, especially when his aging analysands belted out that little known Nellie Kelly verse to “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” he had taught them unknowingly. (How their collective anamnesis burst through—those poor amnesiacs couldn’t help but remember! How I warily watched their melodious mouthings become Codell’s “last vestige of memory.”)
The melismatic became, through his awful auspice, automatic, and when Mr. C. observed my devout observance of his spellbound room of warblers, he would invariably promise, “Abie, one day this will all be yours!” All mine indeed, because it all added up, and I was the one who added it, from the parts of its sum to the sum of its parts. Barry called me the “Summer Supreme” for good reason. He might have even first said (through Chance), “When the Summer ends, the Fall begins,” referring to me. I am sure he dubbed me the “Geiger Counter” for correctly recounting the careers of Hans, Abraham, Gary, Matt and Teddy Geiger. He could count on me to count anything. Have I not fled like a frightened masseuse from Al Gore to algorism? Ah, but that is now, and this was then: but once, yet once again fine, a gain, indeed all mine. Why now do I not feel? Because I put my shoulder to the wheel? Have I not put my ear to this terrible year? What is left to hear? Where is a wherefore, a Y chromosome in the wink of a transcendental I, something still with us, not even-steven, yet oddly even, evenly odd?
I say, “Cease the day!” I will end swearing to God: Enough lying in relying--give me more memory! Sure as my name is Abraham “Abram” (Don’t Call Me Abraham) Abramson, Barry once said (without consulting his wife) I could leave this joint and live with him as a boarder so I could study Tyndale’s Torah. So what kind of cleaving, bar devekut, was he leaving? For giving, I forget. For getting, I forgive. All in all, I let him live. Now I am pure, with no lure burning. O, cure of learning! I have put lids on all my hybrids! No more ligers and tigrons nestling, no more chess-boxing, no more checker wrestling. I am no longer “the perilous perwinkle of all life’s crayons” or “the little boy with his finger in the dike crying wolf” or whatever words with such relish he always mustered!
I know English Gematria as well as the next fellow. I understand “now here” equals “nowhere.” I see how he mixed my Idea Unfixed! I ask most respectfully, most reverentially, what kind of abandonment is this, orphaning the California Home as well as myself? Did he not know the “straw epistle” (especially 1:29) by heart? How could he leave, that newly rotting bridge-burner, that vain no-brainer, that streak of little poison (not Lloyd Waner)? Is he sick in the head, that stick in the mud? He is no longer my Buddha. I am no longer his bud. This was a Waldorf-Astoria of a place! What’s next for Barry Codell? Buckingham Palace?
But I do not digress. I waver. For I am nothing but a life-saver. (See Tyndale, Epistle of James, 1526.) O pupil, peer through pleasures--no need to re-rejoice, this is not a choice choice by any means (by many measures). Perhaps my protention of Barry’s mellowed melodies at the end was a miss amiss--does not “Somebody Loves Me” begin the same way as “Give My Regards to Broadway’? Do not “When You’re Smiling” and “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” start with the same three notes? Perhaps for an instant instant at a Name That Tune I surrendered my vigil of virtual vigilance. Codell, it must be noted, never fully subscribed to Professor Van Gelder’s “Theory of Yankee Doodle Dandy” during the Australian phenomenologist’s dynamic presentation at the Actualite De La Phenomenologie Husserliene. Les Defis De La Naturalisation in Bordeaux in 1995. We must remember Husserl himself, at a similar conference over 80 years before, declared, “We are the true Bergsonians!”
Barry, if only I could speak with him, would probably merely attribute my momentary attribute to an instantiation, he would likely say, “For each moment we foment, there is one undone,” and leave it at that. And I would believe him. For we are the true Codellians.
That is why I hesitate to litigate. I know that he knows that his nursing home revue, “Gornischt--The Musical!” is based on my play, “Much Adieu About Nothing,” written for his Scriveners’ Circle playwrights’ group at the California Home (that only I attended). He knows that I know he has sold the rights for the show to the owners of the largest Jewish Nursing Home chain in this entire country of Jewish Nursing Home chains. But as my winning song on that final Name That Tune I played with Barry says, I’ll see him in my dreams--not in court! Why sue? Soon he’ll be suing me, and in no time at all, we’d be suing ourselves. It’s happened before. At bottom, we are brother Abramists, “the Tribe of the Diatribe” (according to the missing sura), Friends of God, Sons of Keturah! Was it not for me, this perfect plan to go from wise guy to wise man? I wish Barry Codell well, through and through, as he, of course, would often do.
So let us belly back to the BAR and drink of the true baseball solutions of the grandly great, too-late Shalom Goodwill Aloha, who died at 107 (I think the suspense, not the suicide, killed him) talking to me, not Barry, decrying the Cubs and life itself (in that order), a man suddenly apropos more than ever, thanks to the controversial call depriving Armando Galarraga of a recent perfect game, reminding me Addie Joss’s 1908 “perfecto” ended with a missed call at 1st base (Shalom, secret pal of peerless mathematician Richard Brauer, and non-bastard son of Albert Goodwill Spalding, was there Charlie, the same year he watched with reverence rookie Albert Schweitzer hit a career high .291 for the St. Louis Browns!) in the pitcher’s favor, prompting me to give Galarraga credit, taking away Joss’s gem, leaving the historical perfect game total at 20, changing the record book for ever before that so-called Barry Codell gets his hands on it
A.A.
