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
Urban Virus
Category Archives: journey
Landscape and CJ
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
Dichotomy?
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?
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
Dancing Clouds?
LAST DAY OF SALE!!!
Take a walk in Tangier Gardens.
Only 99cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
Forget Science, Forget Gaia
No photographic excellence here.
Clouds, forests, mountains and sky–do clouds dance? Gracefully?
Now, tell me what you see…
I see inspiration. I was inspired to write. Fictional autobiographies by Christopher Janus. Arcane adventures in nature. Read the first, Tangier Gardens. On sale now for a short time.
Take a walk in Tangier Gardens.
Only 99cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
Don’t turn your back!
Love landscape? Don’t turn your back.
He was confused and in Morocco.
His last hope was a garden.
Young American coming of age thought he was on a Med holiday; but found himself surrounded by an aggressive landscape haunted by the worst of nightmares–Joseph Conrad’s African and TE Lawrence’s Arabian.
Ebook on sale-75% off.
GET IT NOW!
Only 99cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
MATRYOSHKA
Like to Solve Puzzles?
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…journeys of adventure and discovery, or…
MATRYOSHKA—the Russian nesting dolls for CJ
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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.
EXCELLENT VALUE! On sale now-75% off.
Only 99cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
Too Hot?
Northern Hemiisphere hot summer weather got you down?
Tired of the pros an cons of ‘climate change’?
Take a break. Take a walk in Tangier Gardens–refreshing!
EXCELLENT VALUE! On sale now-75% off.
Only 99 cents at Smashwords this link: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma
Who is CJ? A landscape architect whose attraction to plants drives his design to the arcane side of ethnobotany. Get the ebook today.
I’m Curious
Are any of you readers NOT A BOT?
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
Thank you.