I don't care what is written," Meyer Landsman says. "I don't care what supposedly got promised to some sandal-wearing idiot whose claim to fame is that he was ready to cut his own son's throat for the sake of a hare-brained idea. I don't care about red heifers and patriarchs and locusts. A bunch of old bones in the sand. My homeland is in my hat. It's in my ex-wife's tote bag.

Often a retrospect delights the mind.

I am much inclined to live from my rucksack, and let my trousers fray as they like.

I am accused. I dream of massacres. I am a garden of black and red agonies. I drink them, Hating myself, hating and fearing. And now the world conceives Its end and runs toward it, arms held out in love.

Let me be the child in the story and declare that the Emperor is naked — or that America is culturally bankrupt.

The Olympic Movement is a 20th century religion. Where there is no injustice of caste, of race, of family, of wealth.