Three Sentences

Three sentences, from three different sources, each encountered in the course of a single day.

The first:

"The endless struggle of statesmen [is] to rescue some permanence from the tenuousness of human foresight."

-Henry Kissinger

The second:

"[This book is] one more attempt to freeze the flux of life into the icy permanence of print."

-John Updike

But then, the third:

"The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor yet does bread come to the wise, nor riches to the discerning, nor favor to the learned, but time and chance happen to them all."

-Ecclesiastes 9:11


Is the third a rebuke to the first two?  I don't know, I can't figure it out.  I've been thinking about it for hours...

Toronto: First Read

Last summer, having no idea that within a year I'd be moving to Toronto, I read Michael Ondaatje's ethereal novel, 'In the Skin of a Lion,' about the construction of Toronto's Prince Edward Viaduct, and the city's water works.  Of course it isn't really about those things, or isn't only about them.  It is also 'about' the city's immigrant communities in the early 20th century, and about political greed and convulsively warring ideologies, etc.  I can't remember the exact details.  But what stays with me is the vision of dreamlike, incomprehensible life.  Loosely connected events, randomly beautiful, violent, hilarious, impossible.  It's the kind of book which, no matter what time its subject matter is taking place, always seems to be happening at night.  I wonder if any of it can possibly mean anything to the present-day city...