What are journeys to portals?
They are landscape experiences free for everyone to discover.
How to discover?
Christopher Janus was a discoverer.
Christopher Janus grew up in the western New Mexico landscape.
But it wasn’t until CJ journeyed for a term abroad design study in Morocco that he discovered for the first time plant and landscape access to portals.
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The following are landscape stories—about CJ’s landscape portal discoveries and his landscape architecture career.
Tangier Gardens—everybody knows Morocco—or do they? CJ the student discovers.
A senior in Landscape Architecture at university on a term-abroad design study, CJ, expecting sandy beaches, colorful exotic markets and timeless pedestrian cities, encounters in Morocco a strange culture and an even stranger landscape.
Off-balance from their impacts, he meets two eccentric botanists who give him straight talk about plant maintenance; but then lead him on a garden excursion one step beyond.
Will he overcome these challenges? Can he find his way out of this strange entanglement by his own will power? Can he complete his Moroccan term-abroad design study?
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CJ writes a collection of short stories attempting to understand the weird cultural and landscape encounters that Morocco presented to him.
Living in birth-of-the-21st-century Tangier, Christopher Janus, CJ, during his six-month term abroad design study, explored northern Morocco. But his geographic explorations were not the entire story. Unlike CJ had ever imagined, that geography throbbed with a much larger pulse beat—that of the northwest Africa landscape.
He gained life knowledge not taught in the classroom including unbelievable cultural lessons from deep northwest Africa landscape roots, and obscure horticultural essences from a pair of Tangier botanists.
With Andalusian legacies, languorous gardens, Moroccan markets and ancient medinas, his short stories are replete with Mediterranean cultural life, landscape and environmental gravitas.
Will his short story collection be accepted? Will he graduate?
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CJ builds his career on the shores of the Red Sea in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia where he first discovers the sands—the Arabian Peninsula sands.
Following CJ’s arcane adventures in Morocco’s landscape and gardens, Yenbo Palms opens a new, strange landscape story.
Christopher successfully develops his young career in the US only to be smashed by a huge personal disaster. In his struggles to recover, he takes a risk. He dares a major career move forward by accepting landscape responsibilities for a massive new town, multi-year project in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Yenbo, CJ’s project site on the Red Sea, was featured as a main location in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia. Yenbo has changed but the endless horizon-to-horizon, barren, arid landscape has not. That landscape still features naked, rugged, maroon mountains sharply rising above beautiful golden sands, themselves mysteriously swept by ominous dark, red desert swirls—seductive and ever threatening.
CJ will live for years in a culture extremely self-protective, its deepest roots in an Arabian Peninsula landscape without water and without soil. Things do not go his way and another personal disaster strikes. Can he recover? And if so, how?
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In mid-career, CJ, in the Jungfrau Region of the Swiss Alps, seeking to balance his personal and professional life, discovers an ethereal link between culture and landscape.
In this story CJ is in Zurich, then the Jungfrau Region of the Swiss Alps and finally on his way to Cairo on another new town project.
After six years in the Saudi Arabian sands, CJ, having lost his job and his best friend, explores the geography, the people and their deep cultural roots in the Jungfrau Region. There he discovers, in the intertwining local culture and landscape, hope and a way forward.
In the Jungfrau Region, is CJ “tilting at windmills” or does he find the “holy grail” of landscape design?
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After numerous mid-career flip-flops in Cairo, Istanbul and the Persian Gulf, CJ gets battered once again by life’s unpredictability.
Mid-career flip-flops burden Christopher.
During his Cairo project time, CJ makes a fateful Pharaonic landscape walkabout. The Egyptian Sahara takes everything from him, scouring away both his emotions and his professional credibility.
But he recovers his personal life by returning to the Swiss Alps Jungfrau Region and getting married. Then he reclaims his professional career with new projects in Istanbul and along the desert edges of the Arabian Peninsula—Persian Gulf shores.
Unfortunately, in the end, his personal life is once again shattered. Will these setbacks ever end?
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CJ’s international landscape architecture career introduced him to other realms in the landscape—but the Empty Quarter, the Rub al Khali and its sands—too much.
In this story CJ is in the United Arab Emirates—Fujairah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi and the Empty Quarter. CJ’s professional career is mature but his personal life—a disaster.
He needs a complex project to shelter him from life’s latest blow. It doesn’t happen until he gets a phone call from an unexpected source. His sheltering cocoon comes together but it has the strangest conditions. CJ must decide if he is willing to risk it all on a huge 5-star destination project in the infamous, the death defying Empty Quarter where that shape-shifting desert landscape becomes the focus of world attention—the sands—sand fever.
Does he have the character to battle this landscape, this most perilous realm?
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I write autofiction in the literary fiction category.
Written by me, a landscape architect, these are stories about landscape architecture and its deeper root—landscape.
These stories explore what our landscape architecture profession rarely covers, the drama between humans and the landscape.
The Landscape Architect series explores landscape and culture from the Strait of Gibraltar to the Bosphorus, from North Africa to the Middle East.
Christopher Janus, CJ, is a landscape architect who has landscape dilemmas. Expect landscape drama.
CJ, the protagonist in the series, is an American landscape architect who never wanted to leave home; but life had other plans for him—over 30 years an expatriate in the sands —the Sahara, the Empty Quarter, everywhere in between and around all the edges. He had his hands full and his future… read for yourself.
Fun fast reads.
If you are interested in ‘one step beyond’ landscape adventures in exotic geographies, then please sign up for my newsletter via Mail Chimp at https://bit.ly/3q5lcaq.
Buy my TANGIER GARDENS e-book and paperback–at https://amzn.to/3suCIpw
Sometimes life takes us down roads to places we never wanted to be.
The landscape—where an ever-vibrant blend of human life and culture thrives—one step beyond. If you haven’t been there… you have no idea. CJ went there. You should too. Get started with Tangier Gardens.
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flahertylandscape belongs to Edward Flaherty, a published novelist and retired American landscape architect.
The purpose is to start the visitors on journeys in the landscape, in gardens, and among plants to discover portals.
Portals? They are moments that take the visitor out of the present into other realms.
The journey is free and portals have no entry fees. Your only responsibility is to discover the portals.
Please visit the blog–there is room for everyone.
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Feeling S T R E S S E D?
Aren’t we all stressed out these days?
How to get relief? A path to relief, that is this website’s purpose.
Why the landscape?
Because it is freely accessible. Because it has always been a source of personal succor in times of stress–and now we are all under unusually intense stress.
The landscape provides access to portals. For sometimes only the briefest moment, a portal allows us to breathe. A portal allows us to feel the freedom, the peace, the inspiration we all innately desire. The portal is the most easily accessible source of basic self-help.
The way I see it, the good Lord has provided in this creation the natural relief from our stressful conditions of life.
We have only to discover it.
Discover a portal, cross the threshold…unpredictable, unimaginable, indescribable, transcendent…all possible…
This site, this blog is all about finding paths, taking journeys in the landscape to find those portals of freedom and peace–and they, the plants, gardens and landscapes, are evergreen and freely accessible to all of us.
Nice blog
Interesting blog, much to see.
You are a treasure.
Discovering beauty in nature via all the senses–indeed. Macrocosms and over their thresholds. Great fun and thank you for the kind and helpful comments. 🙂
Edward, I love your blog, as well as your writing. I love the way you create through landscapes. It all pertains to life as a whole, right down to a macrocosm of possibilities. Please let me know if I am seeing this wrong, but I believe I see right where you are coming from in that, I strive to do that very thing with my poetry. I want to break down nature with all the senses. So, I must tell you how remarkably brilliant this is. To leave stories open ended is also fabulous. The human mind can take those stories anywhere. For myself, I think of it as mini vacations for people who cannot get away. I know I am going to love reading your stories. I thank you so much for dropping in and checking mine out. I am so excited about your writing, I could just burst. Thank you so much for being, and for being remarkable. Much light and Happy Thanksgiving.
Thank you for visiting
See you on the other side of creativity
As always Sheldon
Thank you for the ‘like’, Edward. It’s amazing how much setting, in real life or in a short story, can impact what can occur or be told. Interesting concept. : )
Great blog!
Mr. Edward,
Thanks for visiting my Blog and putting your likes.
I was amazed to see and browse your Blog and have followed it also.
I shall come and read other posts in due course.
I felt that a person like you who can write such beautiful articles and has such wonderful thoughts should be commenting on my Posts.
Please do not mistake me.
Thanks again or your visit.
Regards
Shiva
Great blog! Look forward to reading many of your posts:)
We invite you all to visit Norway! Digitally, that is! 😉
On our blog: http://www.SeeNorway.wordpress.com
Love the premise. There are so many surprises available just by walking through nature.
You can unfollow someone. On your profile in the right panel, below your list of friends, there is a section called People XXX is Following. Click that heading and it will take you to a list of people you follow. To the right of each person are options to Add as Friend, or Stop Following.
I like the your approach much from gardens, to … all types of interactions with the landscapes!
I experience the landscape and write about it when it becomes embedded in me…thanks for visiting my blog – – you introduced me indirectly to your blog!
I stepped away from my existential response to Grant Richard Jones above by saying I was ‘heading outside for a walk’. I am attaching an audio file which is music from the Bernese Oberland group, Edelwyss-Starnen. They sing the last verse of Mys Alpli, their alps. High in the Berner Oberland, an alp is a field, a pasture, a productive piece of mountain land where animals can be grazed. Thus in the background of this you can hear the bells of the sheep, goats and cows. These people share their love of the landscape and its animals in their music.
[soundcloud url=”https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/217597274″ params=”auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&visual=true” width=”25%” height=”150″ iframe=”true” /]
Listen to that, let it find its way from your ears to your heart–that is a walk outside. 🙂
Strange that–stories without ends–strange package–like opening a wrapped present again and again without ever getting to the present. Does that say something about a life condition we all face? Oh, don’t mind me–I’m heading outside for a walk. All the best, Grant! 🙂
Enjoyed the “Oval Garden” Ed. Your stories without endings are inspiring me to write more Coyote poems.
Interesting! The set and scenery Get first billing. Can’t wait to read.
Hi Edward!
I love the concept and connection that you’ve made as life being a landscape in and of itself. I see much truth among the layers of it – much like an onion. Thank you for stopping by my blog! Sunny regards, Heidi
Great thoughts and perspectives
What an unusual (and fascinating) blog – I love the photos…
Your landscape stories are very intriguing. Wonderful work!
Thanks for visiting my blog! Kind regards, Josephine.
There is a landscape engine inside! Just keeps ticking.
Ed, thanks for pointing me to the blog. I will enjoy perusing it from time to time.
So, this is what old retired landscape guys do when they are kicked to the curb? I wonder what old retired GIS guys will do when they get kicked there?
Thanks Becky for sharing your landscape perceptions. I hope others of you do, too.
I like Becky’s varied layer approach to landscape…mental to the real in art; and utilizing personal space for growing food…both essential in their own ways but the last–the edible landscape, in these days, is so very important.
Becky made me think that I need to say that my landscape stories are challenging and not focussed on neo-romantic beauty and wonder…why not beauty and wonder? Well, heck most of you have that right outside your front door or at the edge of your neighborhood. 😉 Don’t need someone else’s second hand experience, right!
I write my landscape stories like a walk through a garden, through a landscape…places that are a bit familiar but, at any given time you can, in a relaxed sort of way, just discover something, or find something fun…or awesome. Those are the landscape stories…plot secondary…characters secondary…the journey through them–primary!
Listen, I am convinced that I don’t need to lead any reader by the nose. Each reader brings important resources on the journey through my landscape stories. In recognition of those individual resources, I provide opportunities for discovery within the many landscape threads in the stories.
I set up the stories to have, in summary, four fundamental, discrete yet interweaving, layers of experience–sensual, emotional, intellectual and spiritual…these give a variety of entries…doors…windows, for a variety of readers into the unforeseen.
You all can take it from there. Have fun, enjoy the reading.
PS: As the author, I will never give you the answer. That is your challenge as a reader…exactly as it is in life.
The combination of landscape, fiction, and art in your blog is fascinating and something of a mystery.
The story of landscape in my life is a story of a longing to create art with the pallet of nature, discovering what is real, by playing with the raw materials of creation. Recently, my interest in landscape has become one of practicality…the return to the old ways, utilizing the elements of nature for more than spaces of beauty and wonder — utilizing personal space for growing food — the edible landscape.
Whether fiction, art or practical, there is no doubt that a landscape is an influence on the lives of the people and animals in its midst.
Blessings on your adventure.
Thanks for connecting with me on Linked n. These look fascinating and just from reading the home page, touch on similar life interests… I’m a landscape designer and horticulturist, a garden writer who has been told I should also write romantic novels, have visited Morocco and Tangier, lived in the middle east and love the fusion of cultures and the places where they meet. Though I have little time for reading, this looks like something I will love.
Hi I learned about your blog on LinkedIn and came to check you out! I hope to hear from you again soon!