W. Curt Mulligan, a Los Angeles Landscape Architect, executor and close professional friend of George Moleson, recently met the author at the above pictured Eau Zone pool deck restaurant in Dubai. Credit to Kerzner International Developer, EDSA Consultant and Desert Landscape Contractor.
Over the past year via some excellent beta reader reviews from Goodreads, I have updated my original Beta of Crystal Vision to Beta 02.
Crystal Vision is a landscape story–a landscape story like my first, The 23 Club.
The 23 Club featured Erik Chalmers and occurred primarily in the Arabian Peninsula sand desert known as the Empty Quarter.
Crystal Vision is a pilgrimage, beginning near Medina in the Western Region of Saudi Arabia, that ultimately takes George Moleson and his design journals into the landscape heart of the Bernese Alps–Grindelwald, Switzerland.
George Moleson is a professional landscape architect from Los Angeles who had taken a job six years ago planning, designing, building, managing a new town on the Red Sea in Saudi Arabia.
When his best friend on the job commits suicide, George is shocked and is left with only one clue. His options become clear when his own job is terminated and he has nowhere to go. He begins a pilgrimage to the cities and hinterlands of Thailand and Switzerland in a hunt to find the fiancé of his recently deceased friend.
Along the way, George has doors of perception opened in Thailand’s Golden Triangle where he meets Vrndadevi, a permaculture specialist who talks to him about spiritual settling. Then she points him to the Swiss landscape where yodeling and the Bernese Alps encourage George into deeper personal and professional introspection.
These peculiar landscape events gradually refocus his original search to close the loop on his friend’s suicide onto his own professional and personal life uncertainties–a search to answer questions that we all face.
On the surface, this story is about design, plants, gardens and it takes place in exotic locations–a natural for me. But then it turns into something deeper.
Normally designers’ notes and their journals do not interest me–they are the overelaborated microscopic views of narcissists–the stuff of ethereal ephemera–but this one is different.
George’s design journals are like a well structured and well detailed beautiful garden, a series of garden rooms that had unfortunately been neglected, had become overgrown.
Look closely at them, pull out a few weeds, cut back overgrown others–the careful cleaning reveals beautiful plants with the spark of life, with kernels of good health. Inspirational portals of excellence await discovery, enjoyment, exploration.
Here is a link to all ten Crystal Vision episodes’ summaries, including the entire Preface.
