'Los Angeles is far from possessing the beauty of New York or the depth of Chicago, and I understand why some French people spoke to me about it with such distaste: without friends, I'd be lost. But it can be enjoyable as a kaleidoscope - with a shake of the wrist, the pieces of coloured glass give you the illusion of a new rosette. I surrender to this hall of mirrors... The French consul has invited me to dinner with N and M. In the entrance hall there is an exhibition of Hawaiian jewellery, shell necklaces, leis, and softly coloured seeds. I have never seen such an enchanting restaurant: it's as beautiful as the Palais des Mirages in the Musee Grevin. Greenhouses with luxuriant plants, aquariums, aviaries where birds coloured like butterflies swoop, all bathed in a murky, submarine light. The tables are glass pedestals in which the gleaming ceiling is reflected; the prismatic pillars are faceted mirrors in which space is infinitely multiplied. We dine under a straw hut at the end of a lake, in a forest, in the middle of an enormous diamond. The waitresses' costumes are a modest version of Hawaiian dress. In cylindrical glasses, which hold nearly a pint, we are served zombies (cocktails made from seven kinds of run poured on top of each other: the amber liquid is layered from dark brown to light yellow). The meal transports us, unexpectedly, to China. The dishes don't have that overly visual aspect that often discourages the palate in America; instead, the look very appealing. And if French cooking is 'thoughtful', as Colette says, this cuisine seems the fruit of a thousand years of meditation.
At midnight we are alone on top of a hill. We sit on the ground and smoke in silence. Los Angeles is beneath us, a huge, silent fairy-land. The lights glitter as far as the eye can see. Between the red, green, and white clusters, big glowworms slither noiselessly. Now I am not taken in by the mirage: I know that these are merely streetlamps along the avenues, neon signs, and headlights. But mirage or no mirage, the lights keep glittering; they, too, are a truth. And perhaps they are even more moving when they express nothing but the naked presence of men. Men live here, and so the earth revolves in the quiet of the night with this shining wound in its side.'
from America Day by Day - Simone de Beauvoir
