THE OLYMPICS: WINTER GAMES AT ALBERTVILLE : Collage of Humanity Is Vibrant

So, here we are, under a crescent moon, frozen-nosed and exposed, me and Dan and Marilyn Quayle, Francois Mitterrand and Juan Antonio Samaranch, Melanie Griffith and Don Johnson, five varieties of Russians, four Jamaican bobsledders, three People’s Republic of China figure skaters, two Swaziland and Senegal skiers, one Virgin Islands luger and a Viking by way of Minnesota.

We are the world.

We are the children.

One Germany, one flag. Civil war-torn Yugoslavs, striding side by side. Erstwhile “Reds,” made-over and newly accessorized in peach and pea-green. Sledders, skaters and skiers of color, interspersed among sportsmen and sportswomen once collectively white as snow. All part of a new world order. All on parade for a new decade’s Olympic Games.

It’s a five-ring circus, with France as ringmaster. French President Mitterrand’s stage. International Olympic Committee President Samaranch’s performers. Opening ceremony, Saturday night, Albertville’s oddly named outdoor “Olympic Theater.” Tumblers and acrobats. Stilt-walkers and bungee-jumpers. Circus crossed with performance art, simultaneously sensational and surreal. Barnum & Bailey on LSD. Out of their chairs pop the Quayles, un-deux-trois- go, doing the “wave.” So does Francois. So does Juan Antonio. Another Olympic first.

What next?

Atlanta, 1996, maybe.

Tomahawk chops.

It’s a new world. A new day. Anything can happen. There is a spaceman somewhere above us tonight, far beyond the snow-coned Alps, up there by that silvery moon, a Russian cosmonaut in a capsule. He was a Soviet when he went up. Now there are Soviets no more, and he knows not where to come down. Nobody has cleared him for landing. He is a man without a country.

He should have landed here.

You know. Part of the show.

Everybody coming together.

Fighter jets fly over our heads, but they are not looking for a fight. Their only mission is to dispense plumes of multicolored smoke, not oxymoronic peace-keeping missiles. Dan Quayle can look high in the sky tonight and applaud. A year ago, he would have been worried. A year ago, he wouldn’t even have been here. Americans were at war. Russians were Soviets. Germans were merging. Romanians and Hungarians were emerging. Serbs and Croatians were brothers and sisters. South Africans were trying harder to become brothers and sisters.

A changing world.

Here it is before us, as far as we can see. Look over there. The girl in the blue parka. You know that face. Katarina Witt. Last time anybody held a Winter Olympics, she was more than a pretty face. More than a figure skater. She was an East German. What is she now? She’s an announcer for American TV.

A changing world.

There they are down there, faces in the crowd. A girl in a peach parka. Her name is Marguerita Drobiazko. A boy in a pea-green parka. His name is Povilas Vanagas. She is from Moscow. He is a Lithuanian. Their lands have separated. He was a soldier. He met her at a sports club. She is 20. He is 21. They paid their own way here. Nothing is going to keep them from ice-dancing in the Olympics together.

“We didn’t have guns,” Povilas said. “But we had tongues to say: ‘We want to be free.’ ”

A changing world.

Here comes a man from the Bermuda Olympic team, in Bermuda shorts. Doesn’t he know that it’s winter? Here comes the entire Luxembourg Olympic team. Doesn’t he know that it’s winter? Here comes the Olympic delegation from India. Do they even have winter? They are right behind the Olympic team from Iceland. Will Iceland win any more gold medals than India?

There goes Alphonse Gomis, Senegal’s one-man band. There go Puerto Rico’s bobsledders, in hot pursuit of Jamaica’s. And there goes Herschel Walker, a 220-pound professional football player, who is on the same team as Kristi Yamaguchi, a 93-pound figure skater, who is on the same team as Natasha Kuchiki, a skater who is 15, who is on the same team with Raymond H. (Bud) Somerville, a curler who is 55.

United for the United States.

Unlikely people together.

In a rapidly changing world.