The third man.

I've been working on a rewrite of a short story. I have just, grudgingly, gotten rid of my third man. I really wanted there to be three men. I wanted there to be three men because in an important bureaucratic moment, there would always be three representatives in attendance. Nobody in business would ever show up for something critical with just two people. My third man didn't need to *do* anything. He just needed to sit there in a mediocre suit and occasionally shake hands.

Can't be done in a short story, I fear. My third man took on all kinds of unreasonable importance. I tried giving him a line or two, but the lines took on inappropriate weight. When he was silent, there was tension in the lack of words. He was mystery. He was the cipher. All the gravity of the story flew away from my other characters and stuck to him.

So now he's gone. Third man, RIP.

It irritates me. Sometimes there is just a third man in the room. Sometimes he isn't important for anything except being that third person. And I'm not good enough to find a way to include him in the story without making that into the story.

Not yet, anyhow.

Christ Climbed Down, Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no rootless Christmas trees
hung with candycanes and breakable stars

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
there were no gilded Christmas trees
and no tinsel Christmas trees
and no tinfoil Christmas trees
and no pink plastic Christmas trees
and no gold Christmas trees
and no black Christmas trees
and no powderblue Christmas trees
hung with electric candles
and encircled by tin electric trains
and clever cornball relatives

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no intrepid Bible salesmen
covered the territory
in two-tone cadillacs
and where no Sears Roebuck creches
complete with plastic babe in manger
arrived by parcel post
the babe by special delivery
and where no televised Wise Men
praised the Lord Calvert Whiskey

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no fat handshaking stranger
in a red flannel suit
and a fake white beard
went around passing himself off
as some sort of North Pole saint
crossing the desert to Bethlehem
Pennsylvania
in a Volkswagen sled
drawn by rollicking Adirondack reindeer
and German names
and bearing sacks of Humble Gifts
from Saks Fifth Avenue
for everybody's imagined Christ child

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and ran away to where
no Bing Crosby carollers
groaned of a tight Christmas
and where no Radio City angels
iceskated wingless
thru a winter wonderland
into a jinglebell heaven
daily at 8:30
with Midnight Mass matinees

Christ climbed down
from His bare Tree
this year
and softly stole away into
some anonymous Mary's womb again
where in the darkest night
of everybody's anonymous soul
He awaits again
an unimaginable
and impossibly
Immaculate Reconception
the very craziest of
Second Comings

Georges Simenon

Interview in French. I can just puzzle my way through.

Simenon showed us that crime is banal. At the same time he showed the fascinating life of the everyday person in France. Mystery writers do that all the time.

I wish that speculative fiction-- fantasy/sci fi-- did it more. It seems many science fiction/fanatasy stories I read bejewel the fantastic. Gilding the lily?

Gray vs. Grey

In a round of editing I've been doing lately, I noticed I use both "grey" and "gray". If I had to pick, I would say that "grey" looks a bit better to me. Sometimes. Grey eyes, gray suit. Why do I do that?

A little bit of research via Dr. Google tells me that "gray" is primarily used in the US and that "grey" is primarily used in the UK.

From some discussion boards, I read that The Associated Press Style Book wants "gray". So for US editors, "grey" is probably going to look funny. The New York Times is ""The Gray Lady", right?

In A Circle of Quiet, Madeleine L'Engle wrote:

When A Wrinkle in Time went into galleys, the copy editor -- I'm glad I haven't the faintest idea who it was -- had him/herself a ball. First of all, I do spell the English way; I was in an English boarding school when I was twelve, thirteen, and fourteen, and these are the years when spelling gets set. After I had been made to write h-o-n-o-u-r, for instance, a hundred times on a blackboard several hundred times, it was almost impossible for me to spell it h-o-n-o-r. The English use t-o-w-a-r-d-s and we use t-o-w-a-r-d. I like to use them both, depending on the rhythm of the sentence and the letter which begins the following word; sometimes the s is needed; sometimes not: this is, I realize, rather erratic, and I can't blame the copy editor who tries to talk me out of it. Then there's grey, which is English, and one very definite, bird-wing, ocean-wave color to me; and gray, which is American, and a flatter, more metallic color. Then there are the c and s words, such as practice or practise. Abour words like these I'm simply in a state of confusion, rather than aesthetic persuasion, as with grey or towards, and the copy editor can have his way. On the whole I tell the copy editor to go ahead and make the spelling American, but don't muck around with the punctuation.

I suppose I'll mostly strive for consistency in fiction, and go with sound in poetry. As I write that sentence, I realize that grey 'sounds' different in my head than 'gray'. Hm. Perhaps I need to think about this some more.

From the Confessions, Saint Augustine

Is this the rhythm of our world? Is this what you prescribed when from the heights of heaven to the depths of earth, from the first beginnings to the end of time, from the angel to the worm, from the fist movement to the last, you allotted a proper place and proper time to good things of every kind and to all your just works? How can I hope to understand the height and the depth of you, from the greatest to the most lowly of your works? You never depart from us, yet it is hard for us to return to you.

(translation R.S. Pine-Coffin)

The Triolet

One of the elements most important to me in poetry is the sound. I have a definite taste for doggerel.

As a kid, I did myself a real favor by filling notebooks (literally) full of sonnets, rondeaux, whatever I could find. I didn't generate anything for the ages, but I did learn a lot about meter and sound.

Lately, I had the feeling everything I had learned about structure had kind of melted into advertising jingle. Advertising jingle is a nice feel for certain kinds of irony and frantic energy, but it isn't everything that I would like to achieve.

So when I ran across The Rondeau Roundup blog and its Triolet contest, it gave me a good excuse to practice again with a new form.

So for the last few weeks, every time I get a few minutes on a train or at night, I've been writing a triolet. Some of them are very bad. Some of them have promise. The exercise is the point. Getting to the moment where I internalize the voice of the structure is the point.

It may be the natural human need to justify how I spend my time, but this feels like a good idea.