I could never get “magical realism” until I spent too many years around the Rub al Khali–the Empty Quarter.
Then I met CJ. He was obsessed. About? I couldn’t figure it out–magical realism or the Empty Quarter.
He wrote: “How to beat, tame, survive–the Empty Quarter–life–magical realism?
Only by imagination.”
CJ tried…and got beat.
It all started in Morocco, Tangier Gardens, then KSA, Egypt and finally, the Empty Quarter.
…off the beaten track.
Sometimes it is necessary.
I know a guy, CJ, who almost died looking for that refreshing breath.
Tangier Gardens is his story: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Blanket a mountain? Cover sharp ridges and narrow gulleys?
Forests hide mysteries… even from a distance; but when you walk into them… they own you.
There are some things you can’t hide in a forest–CJ found that out in Tangier Gardens–read about it here: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Nature, the environment can hurt so bad—we feel it;
…but it can also inspire hope, recovery, improvement.
CJ learned this lesson in Morocco; read Tangier Gardens: buy it on Amazon here: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
Suffering: the foundation of beauty
Two kinds of suffering:
1. The kind they want you to know; and the other,
2. The kind they won’t tell you.
🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏
The MainStreamMedia tells you one story and Tangier Gardens tells the ‘rest of the story’.
Coming to a village near you–SOON
Disrespect for public and private property.
Tell me what it is without saying it.
I hide from it by writing fiction, Tangier Gardens: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
20,000 feet or on the ground…
In Tangier Gardens, CJ learns about landscapes, gardens and plants. Landscapes are mysterious because they harbor weirdness as he learned from Bree and he sensed from his West Africa experiences.
In Yenbo Palms, CJ once again gets wind of unusual things in the landscape, this time in the deserts of Arabia.
These stories are not for, or about tourists. They are about the expatriate who never dreamt of leaving home. They are about a person who is, like most of us, inspired by the beautiful and endlessly varied landscape.
He loved landscape so much he studied it in college and earned a degree in landscape architecture. But what he learned in school didn’t prepare him for the expatriate landscapes that perplexed him. Arcane landscapes? Could there be such a thing?
CJ chases nature, its landscape and plants to their existential roots. He describes his interactions with cultures, landscapes, gardens and plants of the world—where the unexpected and downright strange become daily facts of life.
Tangier Gardens, buy it now on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
CJ studied fine arts for his first two years at college. In music, literature and painting he found an enigmatic similarity. Many composers, authors and painters were inspired by nature, either the outdoors or human nature. That was clear.
It was, however, the dichotomy of the critics that confused him.
The critics’ perplexing dichotomy pitted human social nature vs the natural world, nature without humans. He wondered why the dichotomy? Were not humans part of the nature in which we all lived? Even though humans were at the top of the food chain we were still part of the chain. How can behavior, intelligence or spirit separate humans from the nature all around us?
And why have so many sought to make that ‘false’ distinction?
CJ’s own battles with this dichotomy got serious when, after deciding to major in landscape architecture, he went to North Africa, for his term abroad design study.
There he met a couple esoteric horticulturists, one Russian and the other British. They had built and were guardians of an arcane garden, the Oval Garden, behind their Hibiscus House. There they tried to educate CJ–solve his enigmatic fine arts, landscape and garden concerns.
Nature and landscape… CJ asked himself what was the difference? Nature ? Is it larger than landscape? He finally decided that landscape was limited by his eyesight. And nature was larger–conceptually, almost everything on this planet. That was his starting point.
But how to understand how the nature of human culture and nature at large fit together? That was always on his mind during his Moroccan adventures.
CJ? The protagonist writing his autobiography in Tangier Gardens, arcane literary fiction adventure. Buy it on Amazon via this link: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv
LAST DAY OF SALE!!!
Take a walk in Tangier Gardens.
Only 99cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
