My Camelot in the sky

Kai/Butones/The Wee One and I were both dressed warmly to catch another sunset in our lives. We knew how the temperature could take a sudden dip so we arrived at our special spot quite prepared with caps and jackets on.

Although the sun was so radiant at 4:22 p.m., when we reached our high spot, it was suddenly awash with gray--low clouds, fog rolling in, etc., the things that make the City of (vanishing) Pines so appealing to migrants like my family. These are the same elements that lured the American colonialists in the past to seek for their sweaty pale skin the coolness of a hill station. The Cordilleras' rich earth was (still is in some parts) a magnet for miners and mining companies with dreams of striking it richer than rich.

To me Baguio remains that special time-space continuum that allows countless others to come up and begin their lives afresh.

To those who love the Baguio that was, that still is and that, with all our hopes, still can be, here's my sonata of photos in the sequence that I took them, a vision of a sunset that looked like a moon rise.

This was a Holy Tuesday afternoon that was not entirely wasted.

Thanks, Kai, for keeping me company again in this city of my misspent youth, a city that hopefully will be haven for a graceful ageing.

Photos by Babeth Lolarga

'One day I will have to write a song about that'--Alan Jay Lerner

I love stories behind stories, especially stories behind the songs I've cherished since age 11 (the age at which I saw the movie musical Camelot at the old Galaxy Theater and felt I would live that Arthurian legend in my life). "How to Handle a Woman" is one of those songs that has stayed and stayed, burned and burned.

Puwede bang bumati? 

My husband Rolly's 63rd birthday won't be until the sixth of next month, but I want him to see and hear this song. I think he can learn a thing or two from it. To watch that hell-raiser of a man Richard Harris interpret this song in his role as King Arthur, copy and paste this site http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U55m_TzM7jw to another tab (something Rolly, in his endearingly old-fashioned ways, would have to call in an assistant to help him sort this out).

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In today's encore selection -- from Alan Jay Lerner, partner and co-writer with Frederick Loewe of 'Camelot', 'My Fair Lady', 'Gigi' and other plays -- an encore selection we often retrieve from the archives at this time of year. Here Lerner explains the painfully poignant lyrics of the 'Camelot' song 'How To Handle a Woman', sung by King Arthur at a point when he is both lost and soon to lose his wife Guinevere to his most loyal knight, Lancelot:

"By the middle of the first act, Guinevere has met Lancelot and has begun behaving in a manner that is to Arthur both perplexing and maddening. Alone on stage, he musically soliloquizes his confusion and out of desperation resolves it for himself in an uncomplicated reaffirmation of love in a song called 'How to Handle a Woman.' I had had that idea for two or three years, but I cannot claim sole inspiration for it. My silent partner was Erich Maria Remarque [author of All Quiet on the Western Front].

"He had just married an old friend of mine, Paulette Goddard, all woman, magnificently distributed, as feminine as she is female. One night when we were having dinner, I said to Erich (not seriously): 'How do you get along with this wild woman?' He replied: 'Beautifully. There is never an argument.' 'Never an argument?' I asked incredulously. 'Never,' he replied. 'We will have an appointment one evening, and she charges into the room crying, 'Why aren't you ready? You always keep me waiting. Why do you ...?!' I look at her with astonishment and say, 'Paulette! Who did your hair? It's absolutely ravishing.' She says, 'Really? Do you really like it?' 'Like it?' I reply. 'You're a vision. Let me see the back.' By the time she has made a pirouette her fury is forgotten. Another time she turns on me in rage about something, and before a sentence is out of her mouth I stare at her and say breathlessly, 'My God! You're incredible. You get younger every day.' She says, 'Really, darling?' 'Tonight,' I say, 'you look eighteen years old.' And that is the end of her rage.'

"I was as amused as I was admiring and I said to him: 'Erich, one day I will have to write a song about that.' The song was 'How to Handle a Woman' which ends:

"The way to handle a woman is to love her,
Simply love her; merely love her,
Love her, love her."


Author: Alan Jay Lerner
Title: The Street Where I Live
Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company
Date: Copyright 1978 by Alan Jay Lerner
Pages: 193-194

The Street Where I Live

by Alan Jay Lerner by Norton

Paperback

 

Source: www.delanceyplace.com