the last book I ever read (Andrew Holleran's Grief, excerpt six)

from Grief by Andrew Holleran:

The people who had come here to listen to the concert, especially those who had found spots on the benches along the wall, looked more like pilgrims at Lourdes, or pale plants seeking the light in a rain forest where, in the depths of winter, lilies were blooming—though here the palms raised their feathery arms into a birdless atmosphere that could never threaten them with a storm or wind, but only the limitations of the space in which they grew, since some of them were about to touch the skylight now: a metaphor for Washington, I thought, where life was so comfortable because it was so artificial, as if we were all living under a glass roof, or in some parlor where a body was laid out amidst the lilies.