Category Archives: journey

Landscape Libretto

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Promises not kept.

Every year in the Christmas season, I refresh with Nutcracker Suite—the more traditional librettos of Tchaikovsky’s great work. It takes me on a ride, a light and joyful ride.

That ride on the dancing, story and music is special. Music can by itself take us on a ride. And so can the landscape. 

The greatest national parks in the US and around the world can take us on a ride. I’ll leave the definition of ’taking a ride’ to the readers. Clue: it has nothing to do with mechanical vehicles.

I’ve always felt that the landscape and garden work of landscape architects should be able to take the user on a ride. Like music, like dance, like poetry. Romantic poets, centuries ago, took that ride in nature. Why can’t the work of today’s landscape architects offer that ride to users? Am I dreaming?

Dreams by the author of Tangier Gardens, buy the book @ Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma

2023 IS RUNNING OUT

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Just for a moment… while you still have time… where does your knowledge come from?

Put aside your scientific understanding about the formation of clouds and fog… and consider this image.

Explore. The image is no clearer than your understanding of what you will find hiking into this valley.  This was one of the Alpine experiences of Byron, Goethe, Tolkien and Franz Hartmann. 

Who is Franz Hartmann? And why does it matter? He wrote “The Foundation of Christian Mysticism”.

Occult is an interesting throw-away domain. It is like a trash can in the science and philosophy labs where everything, that doesn’t quite fit the ‘accepted’ science or philosophy, is dumped.

Franz Hartmann wrote biographies of Jakob Böhme and Paracelsus. He drew links between the past and present.

He was of the day (b.1838, d.1912) when doctors were theologians because in medicine, doctors encounter the unexplainable. And theologians deal all the time with those things unexplainable. So we end up with a theosophical trash can of unexplainables. And those things, the unexplainables, become the reason why we have faith.

As 2024 begins, do not forget to question your sources of knowledge.

As did CJ in Tangier Gardens, on sale, 75% off, til 2023 year’s end. Buy it @ Smashwords: https://bit.ly/3SIAfma

TOMORROW’S PROMISE TODAY

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A sunset, like the end of the year, carries a promise for a new dawn, a new day, a new year, the turning of a page.

From the comfort of your own home, turn the page–take a trip to Morocco.

Buy my e-book now, Tangier Gardens, a thrilling travel and landscape adventure!

Garden nurturing an abandoned human? What would Frances Hodgson Burnett say?

Great gift–massive sale–75% off–only $0.99!! 

At Smashwords–https://bit.ly/3SIAfma

Magische… dreaming… white Christmas

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Tired of…

…politics and socio-cultural tripe?

Take a break at home!

Buy my book, Tangier Gardens, a thrilling travel and landscape adventure!

Great gift–massive sale–only $0.99!! 

Last minute Christmas shopping for you and all your friends into travel and landscape!

At Smashwords–now https://bit.ly/3SIAfma

North Africa… 25 yrs ago

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A curious geography, historically active with pirates, djinns and easy paths to drug use…

A strange place for an American college student to do his term abroad design study.

But Christopher Janus was fascinated with the Med, its sun, beaches and the Moroccan pedestrian towns and markets. CJ chose Tangier.

Read his flash fiction stories Thunderstruck, Steganophonic Streetlife and Cthulu 2000. Share his strange experiences in his series of 40 flash fiction stories entitled, Curious Tales.

Sample them for FREE at: https://amzn.to/41v2DNv

#CLOY

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Iseltwald???
Iseltwald!

Released in 2019, the popular Netflix series “Crash Landing on You” is about a paragliding mishap dropping a South Korean heiress into North Korea — and into the life of a North Korean army officer, who decides he will help her.

This is a love story that overcomes the hardships of world politics–what is there not to like??

After incredible political complications, they separate due to those hardships; but they have already given their hearts to each other. And through the tricks of screen writing they reunite, in the tear-jerker of all time, on the dock in Iseltwald.

Meanwhile, the 400 residents of Iseltwald, a quiet Swiss village on Lake Brienz, rarely visited by tourists, have, most recently, seen hundreds of thousands of #CLOY visitors from Korea and East Asia. Quiet village? No longer.

What do you think about that?

Me? What do I think? Human emotions and their links to the landscape–mysterious, diaphanous, beautiful, arcane–they are the stuff of my books, like Tangier Gardens, link–https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv

Links:
The movie–https://www.netflix.com/ch-en/title/81159258
Swiss newspaper–https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/business/fans-of-netflix-series-disrupt-peaceful-swiss-village/47851764

“Magical Realism”

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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.