L.A. Lost and Found:
The Inn of the Seventh Ray

"Yes, it's true: but I have seen houses in Bel-Air with cool lawns and green swimming pools."  – John Fante, from Ask the Dust












When you get into the little debates over what is good and what is bad in L.A., the old arguments seem not to work. What is good, what is bad, exactly, when, as you drive along Sunset Blvd. you may just as easily see the sleekest Cadillac carrying the sleekest man you have ever seen out of the sleekest magazine, rolling out of some long tunnel gated driveway hidden by palms and a security system, as you will the poorest homeless man you have ever witnessed out on the street right along the next corner, standing there, ripped pants, his leg wrapped around the pole of a stop sign, looking down into the abyss of everything, smoking as though he were nothing more than a machine. In the

distance the mountains could be dust grimy arroyos so full of invasive cacti that it would scare you to walk through such scrub; or those same mountains could be great billows of punchy green overlooking the blue meridian ocean, where a sleek little white sailboat traipses across the scene as though painted. One restaurant is bold and luxurious down such a such street; the next is a tin box covered in graffiti, caged up, barred, and a shock that it still is in business. No, LA, it seems to me isn't a good or a bad, it is just one big 'is,' an experience, a sort of patched together dream of road and palm, car and biker. LA doesn't give you enough time to judge it. In New York the blocks are recognizably either shady or fine. Walk down one boulevard and enter into shops and restaurants that are formal and clean; walk down another and enter into someone elses place, theirs, not yours. In LA you could do both at the same time.

We drove past all of this in Santa Monica and wanted to get up into the Mountains up into Topanga National Park, up above Malibu, through highway 1, past the boardwalk beaches and there rose the California that I remembered -- the sea coast cliffs, drawn up, poised, as if about to dive back into the ocean themselves. So dramatic these scenes: lane upon lane of frantic traffic -- again, cars all mixed, luxury and barely working -- sea to one side, surfboards and crackling little white waves, and then the mountain to the right, a fine dream. We drove up into the foot of the Topangas just as a woman jumped out of the back of a car randomly naked, ducking back in at the sight of the next wave of traffic. Some mountains bear little traffic. These, as you get rolling up, the traffic is just starting. People live up here you've got to remember. These aren't hide for the quiet hills. These are the hills that people have been eyeing up for two hundred years trying to find little footholds at any flat spot

you can imagine. Exactly. Exactly what we found at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, a magical little hillside art palate of a place, nestled in a little valley holding a cool creek, birds coming in to drink, dark and moist, green, overhanging, wild branches that meet you right at your outdoor table. I ordered a blackened cod with grilled kale and asparagus. The fish was steamed and light as butter. As other customers came into this little arboretum, the voices began to take over where the beauty of the hillside quiet had been. It was too bad. Little fountain noise here was pitch perfect. I ordered a Scrimshaw Pilsner. It went good with the scenery. A ptarmigan danced across a draped limb over the creek. This was to be my California. Up inside the hills. Out of the ghost like scenes of the city. Ghosts all over the place down there. Ironic ghosts -- the kind that think they are inside the true pulse of life, but are really just of the grateful dead, pushing their time across the days, asking the dust no questions.