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.
Travel with us to Morocco on a fun trip. Together we will be weaving culture with horticulture. That arcane weave is the magic connection of humans with nature.
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.
Studying landscape architecture, CJ was into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, a term abroad design study, he was 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 good time.
And the subject of CJ’s 43 tales? …his daily life, the high points, the low points–nothing was normal–it was all curious.
Some of you may not have any idea about Christopher Janus, CJ, so here goes.
Who is CJ?
CJ is a contemporary designer, 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—with humanitarian, environmental and spiritual sensibilities—literature, all the fine arts and their roots in the landscape. Those humanitarian and environmental sensibilities drove his thoughts and explorations.
Underneath it all he had questions about his purpose in life. In other words, he was just like many of us.
Drawing upon his fine arts history, CJ becomes obsessed with his experiences in nature and the landscape—experiences beyond the five senses. Beyond the five senses? The paranormal? You can decide.
But what does he design?
Christopher Janus studied landscape architecture in university and graduated; but they did not teach him about landscape. He learned landscape from the hardest, most unfortunate events in his life.
CJ was studying the large scale landscape and the fine detail of plants and gardens to uncover the essence of design. He did that internationally as he worked in the strangest cultures and most exotic landscapes. Christopher Janus had adventures in and was inspired by the landscape.
You may ask what is the landscape? To which he would answer, “When we get out of bed in the morning and put our feet on the floor, we are in the landscape”. You might rightly ask again, what… my apartment, my flat, my house, my town, my city? To which CJ would simply answer, “they all sit in the landscape”.
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.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Interested?
Join my email list for discounts on new releases as CJ goes deep into Cairo, Istanbul, Vienna and the Swiss Alps via this link:
…want to hear about this stroke update. That’s ok because you don’t have to read it. I want to put words to what I felt today.
About 18 months ago I was in bed, a vegetable in a windowless and clockless emergency ward. Tubes everywhere. Nothing that worked before was working.
Gradually things sank in, internal clouds started lifting and I started thinking. Still unable to get out of bed. If only I could speak again. If only I could clean myself again. I dreamed if only I could walk in the country…oh such a dream. Then the rehab began. Then the hard discipline became essential. Little step by little step.
Below is where I walked today. I almost melted with joy and happiness. Wish fulfilled.So many to thank.
Phoenix dactylifera finds its way north to the cold of winter.
I am living in the Northern Hemisphere in a region where serious winter occurs as freezing water and ground along with regular snows, so how is it that I am eating dates which do not grow naturally anywhere near here?
That is almost a third grade geography question. 🙂
But it needs an answer. Shipping and transportation of foodstuffs in our modern world, we should not take it for granted, should we?
Easy, humans will have more time in the landscape, in gardens, with plants, exploring, asking… Older, forgotten knowledge, accessible via plants, will be re-learned.
And what have we forgotten? Perhaps you will share with me?
PS And maybe we will have enough time to have measured discussion on…say… the difference between a republic and democracy, or…how to balance individual freedom with personal, local and national security? 😉 But what does that have to do with plants?
Monochromatic: the transition from fall into winter has brought fog to the mountainsides and lakesides. Only the foreground can be seen.
Fog in the literature of garden design and horticulture–I have always sought clarity in textbooks and popular writing from the fields of garden design and horticulture.
But unfortunately in both fields the more I read the more finely subdivided became the material of those fields–finer and finer until I became lost in a fog.
You may just write me off as another searching for the holy grail but…I have found lessons to be learned from the larger landscape that can inform those who try their hand at horticulture and garden design.
Fog is a monochromatic filter and winter is a gray scale reality. Both lessen the detail and the variety our eyes have to interpret.
So in my garden design, I need only water, healthy soil, light, minerals, deciduous plants and evergreens.
Or is that just the folly of a desktop gardener?
Gray Scale: lessens the detail that our eyes have to interpret.
