10 January 2008

Holy, Holy, Holy

Above a back-alley entrance to a private dining club, which enshrines the usual crowd of the overfinanced and overadmired, there is a frieze, carved in the Roman manner, portraying a priestess or goddess holding wheat stalks, and what look like opium poppies, in each hand, while snakes entwine her arms. Such a frieze, in the ancient world, indicated a sacred site, where neophytes were initiated into a holy mystery. Evidently, the members of the club wish us to imagine that to enter their society is to encounter a revelation equally sacred.


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