THE FACE OF AN ANCIENT

I came across some wonderful lines in a book I've been reading this week.  The novel is about Paris in the 1930's, as seen through the eyes of Binh, the Vietnamese cook employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas.  The lines refer to Binh's first meeting with Gertrude Stein, and they immediately brought to mind this photo of my daughter and myself.  See if you agree.

"A woman with the face of an owl emerges and positions herself inside of a wedge of light.  The woman, I think, has the face of an "Ancient."  This is not to say that her face is wrinkled or dulled.  Ancients, according to Bao, my bunkmate on board the Niobe, wear faces that have not changed for centuries.  To look at them, he said, is to look at a series of paintings of their ancestors and their descendants, as when two mirrors endlessly reflect each other's images.  Bao said that Ancients possess features so strong and forceful that they can withstand generation after generation of new and insurgent bloodlines.  Women, who are accused of adultery because the faces of their children refuse to resemble those of their husbands, are often Ancients.  In a firefly moment of introspection, Bao said that these women are feared because they make a mockery out of the marriage union, that their children's preordained faces proclaim too loudly that the man is irrelevant, that maybe he is not needed at all."   from The Book of Salt, by Monique Truong

Funny, no?  And yes, I look just like my mother (though I did get my father's hair-color).