"In the recurrent dream I had of the little street {I used to dream so frequently while in Paris} the scene always faded at the moment when I came upon the bridge that crossed the little canal, neither the bridge nor the canal having any existence actually.
"This evening, after passing beyond the frontier of my childhood explorations, I suddenly came upon the very street I had been longing to find for so many years...I remember distinctly the premonition I had of approaching {an}other world when, passing a certain house, I caught sight of a young girl, obviously of foreign descent, poring over a book at the dining room table.
"There is nothing unique, to be sure, in such a sight. Yet the moment my eyes fell upon the girl I felt a thrill beyond description, a premonition, to be more accurate, that important revelations were to follow. It was as if the girl, her pose, the glow of the room falling upon the book she was reading, the impressive silence in which the whole neighborhood was enveloped, combined to produce a moment of such acuity that for an incalculably brief, almost meteoric flash I had the deep and quiet conviction that everything had been ordained, that there was justice in the world, and that the image which I caught and vainly tried to hold was the expression of the splendor and the holiness of life as it would always reveal itself to be in moments of utter stillness.
"I realized as I pushed ecstatically forward that the joy and bliss we experience in the profound depths of the dream---a joy and bliss which surpasses anything known in waking life---comes indubitably from the miraculous accord between desire and reality.
"As I walked past the rows of tiny houses sunk deep in the earth, I saw what man is seldom given to see---the reality of his vision. To me it was the most beautiful street in the world....As I passed slowly from door to door I saw that they were breaking bread. On each table there was a bottle of wine, a loaf of bread, some cheese and olives and a bowl of fruit. In each house it was the same; the shades were up, the lamp was lit, the table spread for a humble repast. And always the occupants were gathered in a circle, smiling good-naturedly as they conversed with one another, their bodies relaxed, their spirit open and expansive.
"Truly, I thought to myself, this is the only life I have ever desired. For the briefest intervals only I have known it and then it has been rudely shattered. And the cause? Myself undoubtedly, my inability to realize the true nature of Paradise. What else can explain the tenacity with which I have clung for forty years to the remembrance of a certain neighborhood, a certain wholly inconspicuous spot on this great earth?"
---Henry Miller, Reunion in Brooklyn
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