… 4 a.m… wide awake…. jet lag. My first night back in China… a Beijing hutong of old neighborhoods at the Zhu Yuan. I eat cold eggplant with red sauce in the restaurant, ruminate about how I can now say the word “eggplant” in six languages… jack of all, master of none. Tonight I walked out into the streets… ladies doing a fan dance on the corner… people eating Mongolian hotpot, the tarnished pots lined up on the sidewalk longing for fire and conversation… dirt, smells, garbage in the street… someone emptying a chamber pot into the sewer outside of their house… prolific yellow asters at the curb. They have grown so high that they have been tied to poles.

I do the “Jesus walk” across the noisy, crowded street keeping my eyes at a point on the other side. Cars stop. I make it across.  There are pomegranate trees laden with fruit in the courtyard houses… already they are sold in Spanish market stalls… “granadas” in Spain and “shiliu” in China. Gray-haired aunties sit on tiny woven “dengzi” gossiping in the lanes… fans moving back and forth in their gnarled hands. The night is so hot. Young girls bring me a basket in a grocery store not wanting me to be inconvenienced by the parcels in my arms… sweet, friendly, but I can’t buy just two bananas.

Me… at peace walking through the hutong. Six months ago I would have been confused and agitated… now, I just flow along on the edges of an Eastern flow through whatever happiness or sorrow, heartache or joy that I experience between points on my emotional continuum… blessed nothingness. Taking stock of myself, I realize I have changed yet again. Garbage, dirt and smells don’t bother me much anymore. A lot of things don’t bother me much anymore. Things just go away on their own.

Strangely, I have developed a curious observational relationship to the life of cockroaches in all of their variety. The Palmetto bugs take flight across the paseo in Spain, heavy-winged creatures whizzing around importantly on irrelevant business. I had these nightly visitors scuttling up the stucco walls of my bedroom for the first couple of weeks in Spain until I discovered their point of entry through a closet wall hole to the laundry room and blocked it off.  A more exotic, hairy cockroach crawls up the tub drain in my Chinese apartment when I forget to close it. On those days, the roach gets the deep six swim down the toilet drain… finally, I have made peace with cockroaches. They live everywhere. We co-exist whether we see them or not. Have I come upon a small truth or do I just need to get a life? Just as long as I don’t become one… Metamorphosis! Kafka! Oh, my!

One night in Spain, a fairly large lizard climbed up my bedroom wall (after those tasty roaches). Decision time… chase the lizard and try not to break its fragile tail whilst extricating it or just leave it alone? I opted for, “If it doesn’t bother me, I won’t bother it.” I turned out the light. Perhaps, as I slept, it chomped on the roaches wildly scuttling through its lizard night.

Another change… I looked at property on a Spanish mountain… living up there at night, quietly isolated with nature and the country people. Of course, everyone early on, except me, figured out that, right now, I can’t live in three places at one time. Still, I had a long conversation with Antonio who owns the property. Along with me, he was disappointed about my decision. We had kind of clicked as we talked about his land and crops. He grows his own peppers. His almond and lemon trees grow up there, too He makes his own wine. In the fall, he throws the seeds and skins down the mountain for the mule. For a long while it stinks to high heaven. The mule takes his time eating. There are blue bottle flies everywhere subject to the slowly stubborn mastications of the mule. Antonio came to talk with me with a bouquet of albajaca in his shirt pocket to ward against the flies… a subtle shift… suddenly, I saw myself with tiny-leaved globe basil pinned to my shirt picking the figs… trimming the lavender… but gardening in Spain will have to wait for another day.

 In China, I longed for Spain and, in Spain, I longed for China. The full moon rose one night the color of China, a deep red over the sea, its beauty enhanced by dark clouds moving across its face. I watched its ascent all evening until, at last a transfiguration, a plate of silver… sudden clarity of thought. I realized my seamless Spanish days and nights were at an end. I tried not to cry.

… 5 a.m. now. I am listening for the crickets. There are crickets in the summer’s night everywhere, of course, and the sound of locust during the day. The crickets of China sing a beautiful song. The locusts of Spain make a loud complaint against the pitiless sun, but I do not hear the tree frogs from home. I think of fresh figs, green and black… in Spain, they are coming in while the figs of Northern China are still ripening. In the gardens at home the figs are ripening, too, on a tree that the gardener will bury against cold winters.

Pressed Jacaranda blossoms fell out of my journal just now… Spain… their purple blossoms remind me of the purple Butterfly Bush in this mystical Chinese garden… my haven in Beijing. The wisteria and peonies of spring are gone since I was last here. Cana lilies now bloom around the now still fountain pool where mosquitoes play leap frog on the mirrored surface. There are potted palms and asparagus ferns, clay pots of summer jasmine just starting to bloom. Tomorrow, in the sun, the dragonflies will flirt with the spouting fountain. The bamboo here needs a good cutting back, but the gardener is already preparing for fall… setting chrysanthemums in gray, clay pots in the sun waiting for the brilliant hues of autumn. August, my favorite month is almost gone.

 Now… a cup of jasmine tea from the omnipresent thermos of hot water delivered twice a day to all the rooms of China… sit on the balcony until the garden forms begin to appear and the birds begin to sing… already the first light has come.