An American university student, majoring in landscape architecture, has one more design class to complete for graduation—a term abroad and he has chosen Morocco.
Using the beautifully tiled, colored and patterned public water fountains in the medinas, he plans to count people—a simple ‘turn-up-every-day-and-count’ metric exercise.
Captivating
He thought it would be simple; but it wasn’t.
Ayisha Qandisha and other djinns from North Africa and West Africa are determined to get a piece of the Western fresh meat.
The first doll is the landscape architecture doll. On that doll’s dress can be found painted in delightful detail three stories. That doll contains three stories about the lives and careers of landscape architects. One is about a student, soon to graduate in landscape architecture from university, whose uncertainty endangers his career. The second is about a mid career achiever so eager to succeed that he chances his life. And the last is about a senior professional who just can’t retire.
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Inside that landscape architecture doll is a second doll, an American expatriate doll upon which is painted a pattern at once attractively easy to enter and also difficult to exit. That pattern highlights the interactive threads of each story wherein people, struggling at the sharp edge where multi-cultural theory meets cross-cultural reality, come face to face with the resulting electricity causing unexpected results.
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Inside that expatriate doll is an ethnobotanical doll painted with characters who, in all three stories, explore the hazy edges of people and plant relationships where stories and tales give way to esoterica.
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And inside the ethnobotanical doll is the last and most detailed adventure doll painted with the brightest naive colors with a loudness that hides the hearts of each of the three stories including coming of age in North Africa; dealing with death in Saudi Arabia: and, building gardens with pirates and white collar mercenaries in the Empty Quarter.
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It all begins with a walk in Tangier Gardens, an eBook.
A hopeless student chanced upon a hidden garden. In that garden he discovered a process… an arcane process, some might call it simply maintenance, through which plants in real life, become portals–organs of transmutation where the material becomes the celestial. Thus began his life quest.
If you are not a BOT, then please splash out 99 cents for my book, Tangier Gardens, available now at a 75% discount on Smashwords at this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
These metaphysical autobiographies will transport you to a realm of discovery beyond the limits of nature and the five senses. Christopher Janus graduated a landscape architect, but his true education came from the most unexpected and unfortunate experiences of his life. In his fictional autobiographies, readers follow CJ on his international travels as he discovers the secrets of the landscape. As CJ navigates through this supernatural world and uncovers its hidden powers, he must grapple with the consequences of his discoveries. Along the way, CJ finds himself balancing between love and loss, life and death, and the supernatural and the mundane. If you enjoyed the supernatural thrill of Alice Hoffman’s Practical Magic, you’ll be enthralled by Christopher Janus’s mysterious journeys in “The Landscape Architect“ series.
International travel with all the excitement, all the intrigue—without the wheelies, without the passports, without the hassles.
Colorful Open-Air Markets
Beautiful Flowers
Entrancing Patterns
Exotic Destinations
Peaceful Courtyards
Mystical Labyrinths
Travel with us to Morocco on a quick, fun trip—Andalusian legacies, languorous gardens, ancient medinas and markets—colorful, exotic markets. These tales bring Mediterranean life to the comfortable home of the armchair traveler.
No, no, no—it’s not the evileye. Couldn’t be. The landscape wouldn’t tolerate such violation, would it?
Living in Tangier, 2000, Christopher Janus, CJ, during his six-month term abroad design study, explored northern Morocco. But his geographic explorations were not the entire story. He was swayed—swayed? How? By what?
Unlike CJ had ever imagined, that geography throbbed with a much larger pulse beat—that of the northwest Africa landscape….
If you are:
-A nature lover or a landscape aficionado;
-Curious about all things green—the environment, plants, gardening, horticulture;
-Intrigued about the northwest Africa multi-cultural, mystical history of people and plants, and their arcane interactions with strangers, then…
NOW, FOLLOW THAT LINK AND PICK UP THE FREE EBOOK, CURIOUS TALES—NOW!
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You wonder… who is this CJ?
CJ is an American, born in the Midwest, raised in New Mexico—a hard worker who found his muse in the landscape.
At university, he grew to embrace music, literature and all the fine arts with humanitarian, environmental and spiritual sensibilities. Did that help him in Morocco?
Studying landscape architecture, CJ was into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, that term abroad design study, he’s been in Tangier, a town with sandy beaches on the Med and a historical pedestrian district, the medina. But CJ got more than he bargained for… and it wasn’t a suntan or a relaxing time.
These 43 curious tales were CJ’s final submittal for his term abroad design study. CJ’s curious tales highlight the strangeness of the landscape he encountered in northwest Africa and… what he learned.
