take steps along a path toward discovering the regenerative existential cures to be found in plant dominated environments such as gardens and landscape.
Science has lost its magic since the covid. Academe has lost its magic since the wokeism. I fall back into the era of Christianity and alchemy where nature and its connection to human emotion is magic, a gift from God… but life ain’t just a bowl of cherries.
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.
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.
Listen to Christopher Janus’ own words: “In New Mexico the picturesque landscape captured me… but I felt there was something more… I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“At university, I dug into the fine arts and landscape architecture. I read JB Jackson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, FL Olmsted, Ian McHarg and others, seeking the deeper content of the landscape. Some people today write that sense of place and landscape are similar—they are… nebulous, ambiguous, enigmatic, impenetrable… need I say more?
“A strange thing happened. The more I researched, the harder I looked, the foggier became my results. Then I did my term abroad design study in northwest Africa, Morocco.”
And then what happened?
Take a walk in Tangier Gardens and find out. Arcane adventures on the way.
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.