The dream that
we are our fathers. I walked to the Brod,
41
without knowing why, and looked into
my reflection in the water. I couldn’t look
away. What was the image that pulled me
in after it? What was it that I loved? And
then I recognized it. So simple. In the
water I saw my father’s face, and that face
saw the face of its father, and so on, and so
on, reflecting backward to the beginning
of time, to the face of God, in whose
image we were created. We burned with
love for ourselves, all of us, starters of
the fire we suffered—our love was the affliction
for which only our love was the
cure . . .

Author: Jonathan Safran Foer