“I will be turning of age soon. In about two weeks (and two days to be exact), I will turn forty. It’s funny how we assign it intervals, benchmarking our lives… one, ten (two digits), thirteen, eighteen, twenty-one, thirty, forty… as the years tack on we are supposedly in a progressively worse state. We don’t go along easily with this madness, nor do we attempt to fix it in a sane manner, but add even more insanity to this debacle by making thirty the new twenty and recently Jay-Z made forty the new thirty. All our lives we are wishing that we are older, then suddenly that we are younger. Ludicrous.

I too participated in these vagabonds. However I took it to an extreme. When I was young (in my double digits) I had peered at an old face. It was a very old face. Prominent wrinkles like canyons are gorgeous. Ancient the skin, smooth and toughened like leather. The hair gray. It was the face of Native Americans. It was the face of wisdom, the face of pride. Not like the false pride that is so commonly strut about like Jackson. But a pride of depth, subtle immovability. I wanted to be that face. I wanted to grow old and inherit the wisdom of the ages. It was something real. Something worthy of desire. Most other things are fleeting, fragile, frail. A face! (Four F’s can’t be good!) Ancient. Timeless. Immortal.”

–Louis Pagan