What about the Berbers? Where did they come from? And how many Berber differences between the Mediterranean and the Sahara?
CJ was looking in the landscape for cultural roots.
Morocco–where cultures of the Berbers, Africa, Arabia and Europe collide.
Where do cultures originate? As CJ, Christopher Janus, encountered the diverse variety of north west Africa cultures woven through Morocco, he was mystified. He was uncertain. He lost all clarity.
What had seemed to CJ to be a simple check-the-box term-abroad design study in Morocco became dark and darker. CJ did not know where to turn. The labyrinthine medinas became his metaphoric state of mind.
A fog of failure overwhelmed him. His life was in danger. His project was down the tubes. And his graduation was in question. CJ’s dreams of the future had gone down in flames.
Then he discovered portals–plant portals. What are plant portals?
Let CJ describe them in his fictional autobiography, Tangier Gardens, set at the outset of the 21st century. His is the story of fascination and intrigue. It asks more questions than it answers. Get into it. CJ did.
In a limited time Spring Joy offer on Amazon, 19, 20, 21, 22, and 23 March 2022, the Tangier Gardens eBook, normally $3.99 is FREE. Buy it on the first day of spring! Grab Spring Joy while you can.
If you would like to be kept up to date about discounts on CJ’s portal adventures in the Middle East and North Africa as he becomes an expatriate landscape architect, sign up here on CJ’s mailing list.
Not too long ago I wrote, ‘Becoming a landscape architect is like walking an unknown path in a strange forest. You know someone has walked it before, so you have some confidence. Then the path disappears. You have to make your own path and you don’t really know where you are going. You must decide—forge ahead or go back.’
In one way or another, it is something we all face…
…a real life mystery that can be solved only with the passage of time and the taking of hard decisions.
We all have to take hard decisions in our lifetime.
1943 or 2001?
Sixty years later, not in the Casablanca of French Morocco–but in Tangier, the international heart of Morocco–we are in Tangier Gardens.
In Tangier Gardens, CJ is immersed in an enthralling saga. He is lost in a place non-different from the haunts of Claude Rains and Humphrey Bogart; and he is disoriented. To keep his appointment with destiny, he has to take some hard decisions.
That’s just one of his many challenges. In this foreign landscape, CJ finds a culture whose roots run deep into West Africa, North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula.
He wants to become a landscape architect. He has to make his own path. And the medinas? CJ, trapped in the Tangier medina, finds those labyrinthine paths full of adventure…and despair. The excitement and danger confuse what CJ had thought was a certain destiny.
Who would have thought that the only existential clarity that CJ finds in Tangier would come from the plants and gardens of eccentric British and Russian horticulturists?
Looking for something? First job? New job? The last time I was looking for a job…
Looking for something? Need to put food on the table?
I had an open field. I had a level playing field. But…no job.
No result. In the distance I saw a forest—a well-known forest, everyone knows it, it’s the forest known as the ‘can’t tell the forest from the trees’ forest. I’d been there many times. But I needed a job, so I walked toward it.
That’s when something strange happened. I was pushing my way through a shrub thicket between the field and the forest when I heard… it wasn’t a voice; it wasn’t music… but something in between. I paused and examined the surrounding shrubs. One caught my attention.
Did I hear something?
It was still winter, but this shrub had flowers. I had heard of it before in my horticulture classes. In Latin I learned its name—Hamamelis virginiana. But it’s common name intrigued—witch hazel. I looked deeply into the bright yellow spindly flowers. Woody citric scent that had a floating sweetness with rusty tinges. The strange sweetness pulled me closer to one flower—as I examined—I heard what I should do to get my job; but I didn’t know it yet.
Flower fragrances—can they hypnotize? That’s how I felt as I walked home. I went online to do some research. Hamamelis sp. — a lot of them—virginiana, vernalis, intermedia and a slew of hybrids in the US. And the common name—witch hazel. Witch hazel? I did more research and learned that this plant had a long history of medicinal uses—the leaves, the stems, the seeds, the bark—the list of uses was too long to follow.
Botany–the ethnobotanical threshold.
That was before I saw a cross reference, a link to… I never thought about it—Druidry! The native Americans and the European Celtics—the druids—had another range of uses. Uses that never were covered in my university horticulture studies.
Before I knew it, I was deep into reading about the Hamamelis sacred tree profile and its magic, medicine, and mythology. Deep. I was in deep! Liniments, poultices, teas… and other uses smoking, dowsing, water witching and way-finding.
Way-finding caught my attention because I was looking for a way to find my next job. Was I on some kind of BS coincidence or was I really on the threshold of a new path—a new journey?
That is what I was thinking while I read more. ‘Witch hazel brings light and hope into dark places and dark times. Witch hazels help find things.’ My research told me that this shrub is important to work with if I am on a journey, seeking a new path, or trying to find my way through uncertain times.
‘Work with’ a plant? What the hell does that mean? Should I even take that seriously?
I went back outside and walked once again through the thicket of witch hazel on the edge of the forest. Without trying, I found myself next to the Hamamelis flower that, if I was to use my new language, the flower that tried to work with me.
What did I sense… something touching my heart? Time for a new path, a new job.
Writing—writing? There is a lot of time and space and energy between landscape architecture and druidry, yet both work daily with plants. As I mulled through the differences, as I examined the gulf, I saw they well equipped me to write about it.
Then I wrote Tangier Gardens. I set up CJ as a traditional landscape architecture university student who had a fondness for plants. But when he went to Tangier for his term abroad design study, he encountered experiences in the north west African landscape that caused him to re-evaluate what was the essence of landscape architecture.
CJ had to re-think the relations between human culture and the landscape. He had to rethink the existential realities that linked humans and plants.
Was CJ a landscape architect or a druid? That is for readers to decide as they follow CJ’s Tangier experience. Learn more about Tangier Gardens and CJ on my Amazon book page.
The inspiration that enables us to reach our goals and higher?
Tolkien started a walk that changed his life and our lives.
In 1911, when John Ronald Reuel Tolkien was 19, he travelled on foot from Interlaken to Zermatt with a group of 11 companions, and saw the Lauterbrunnen waterfalls, the Swiss Alpine peaks and the Aletsch glacier, all of which were reproduced in his own drawings in his books.
But what really started his creative fire? And what could start your creative fire?
It can’t be a package tour itinerary, can it?
It can’t be a must see bucket list can it?
If it isn’t the overwhelming beauty of the landscape.
If it isn’t the peaceful quiet of the landscape.
If it isn’t the rich bounty of the landscape.
Then what is it?
All the senses at once consumed—the path to the pineal—and then what? Inspired? How did that happen? not photos, not movies, not virtual reality—but in real life something happened to Tolkien and something can happen to any of us.
Then what was, what is it? Not only was it what he saw. But he felt something—something that inspired him to a masterful effort. We can all see it; but just seeing is not enough.
We can access that spark—but the process is mysterious. How to find that door of inspiration in the landscape—that portal to exceptional effort, exceptional achievement.
Some say the harder we look the more difficult to encounter the reveal. The reveal that refreshes.
In Tangier Gardens, protagonist CJ defined that moment of inspiration in the garden, in the landscape as a portal. A portal.
I am certain Tolkien crossed a portal in the Jungfrau landscape. After which he was never the same. He took the portal experience and over years elaborated on it and shared it through his books and illustrations.
That originating experience remains in these Jungfrau Region mountain landscapes—but not everyone finds that magic portal. Some say it is the work of the pineal gland.
Drive it? Fly it? Take the train? Ride a bike?
Walk it. In the quiet of walk the portal may more easily reveal itself. When that light shines, there is no mistaking it. Can’t be seen, can’t be heard; but communication happens—like instant trance—beyond meditation.
Read how CJ discovers portals in Tangier Gardens. Find the portals for yourself.
Take your part in one of life’s greatest mysteries.
Original 17th century Wenceslaus Hollar view of Tangier harbour post-processed by flahertylandscape.
CJ was coming of age and he was lost. He had wanted to get absorbed in a different culture. The labyrinth had captured him. In his despair he turned to his oldest friend, a girl with whom he had been growing for the past six years. And she became his strength. Though separated from CJ by thousands of miles, she lit his path to clarity.
Tangier Gardens. Launching March 2022. Notification of details and discounts here.
If you Google Tangier Gardens you will find books filled with fine photos of gentrified medina homes in Marrakech, Fes, Tangier, Rabat…
CJ’s head was spinning. His term abroad study landed him in Tangier. The cross-cultural stuff came at him fast and furious. He was on a landscape journey–without end.
CJ was born in the USA but Tangier was not the USA. Back home the suburbs were all green, every house had front and backyard gardens and downtowns, every street was lined with trees and city parks were aplenty. Frederick Law Olmsted’s legacy was as far as the eye could see. But that was home.
Tangier, the medina, the kasba a town for centuries and CJ could not find one tree or even one plant.
Here is what he found–nothing–classic hardscape-only urban realm–not even a weed pushing through paving cracks. Green AWOL. But population density as high as NY City. CJ wondered is it a muslim thing–from the Koran, the Hadith–or just local Cherifs? It was another of the cultural mysteries he encountered. They kept coming like address cards in a full rollodex.
But he did learn some history of public water delivery. And CJ did learn that the urban green was hidden in the private courtyards of every riad in the medina. He found a ’smart urban green’, a small urban green, a manageable urban green, protected, quiet, hidden from public noise, hidden from public view.
CJ had visited Morocco once before. A long time ago . He was with his Mom. And he was only six. They spent three months on the beaches of Essaouira; but they never visited Tangier.
Now 20 years later he was on his way to Tangier. He thought he knew Morocco.
Geographic information science says life is raster and even if you make it vector, the closer you examine the more it becomes raster–so we do our best.
Can you see it on the images? Snow is white, forest is black. Where is the ‘snow line‘?
