“The third time’s the charm,” the saying goes.
It is a paean to the payoff of persistence. Get back up on that horse, re-tackle that problem, dare to open your heart after it’s not only been broken, but broken once again.
It expresses a magical intersection among effort, hope and faith.
Falstaff dispatched one Mistress, advising: “this is the third time; I hope good luck lies in odd numbers. Away, go; they say there is divinity in odd numbers, either in nativity, chance, or death.”
(Homer Simpson’s approach is the considerably less Shakespearean flip side: “You tried your best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try.”)
Little did I know that the allure of the third also is a tenet of photographic composition–one to which I unwittingly have been subscribing, casting vivid foreground wonders against glittering bouquets of bokeh, endless points of light far beyond my grasp. . . at least on first or second try.
Love in the Spaces 