Shabbat morning, a nice day, an opportunity to take the hike I've been postponing for years. This hike, the walking, even if it's not fast, don't even mention running, is what will repair all my body systems. It will regulate my breathing, refresh my bones and breathe new life into muscles that would not pass the test of any standards institute.

My body has long since turned into a neighborhood trash bin. During the past two years the situation has begun to worry me. I don't know, maybe it's my age, and maybe it's because I find myself often visiting my parents in hospitals - and this though my father is considered an athlete and my mother swims several times a week. I have recently begun to see my back, my muscles, my lungs, and of course, certainly my liver as apparently essential things. For the time being, I can't and don't want to stop drinking and smoking, because I tell myself it's a shame to work hard now, to suffer, to torture myself, to go into withdrawal and then in another year, or a month or two weeks or so a war will break out and I'll find myself without sedatives.

I wore shorts. I discovered that the closest thing I have to sports shoes are Crocs, and I stood for a long time in front of the shelf and wondered whether to take the pack of cigarettes, until in the end I decided to do so. I can get drunk just from the clear mountain air. I parted from my family as though I was about to embark on a pilgrimage by camel all the way through the desert to Mecca, and I was on my way.