Tag Archives: Morocco

Morocco–the real Morocco

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100% Moroccans 100% of the time

Day-dreaming or the real thing?

On an early summer day in Gibraltar I was relaxing on a hotel terrace, shaded by wisteria, looking towards, Africa, Morocco, Tangier. At a table near me, I met a grizzly old American landscape architect named Herb Striet. He talked about the geography at the Strait of Gibraltar.

Why was Striet in Gibraltar?

Striet was in Gibraltar because his old-time Lebanese friend ran the bank where Striet kept his off-shore accounts. “It’s convenient,” Striet said, “I can easily go back to my Tangier if I want.” Then the conversation got weird. I couldn’t understand. He twisted. I got twisted; but I listened.

“Heh, heh,” he said, “…if… if I want.” I didn’t really get the picture. He continued. I summarize.

All the while he had been working and living in the Arabian Peninsula, Striet said he had missed the freedom of Morocco, North Africa, the Maghreb. He had missed the accessibility of the Moroccan people. He had missed the intimate human nature of their medina public realm. He had missed life in Morocco, very real, just 100% Moroccans 100% of the time–Morocco, where daily life was not flash like the oil-countries of the Arabian Peninsula. He told me his daily public realm life in the oil-rich Middle East was awkwardly filled with contracted, sad-faced expatriate service people.

At the end, I finally understood, almost, that Striet had a love/hate thing with Morocco. So nice… but…

And all this is mellowed-out by C418’s cut “Door” on his Alpha album.

Curious Tales: The Prequel is free to read on Kindle Vella at this link: https://bit.ly/3Hv6p2p

And the story behind Curious Tales is Tangier Gardens and it is available on Amazon at this link: https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv

Curious Tales Ebook will launch 15April at a huge discount: Sign up here for details: https://bit.ly/3q5lcaq

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Who is CJ?

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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.

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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: 

https://bit.ly/3q5lcaq

Curious Tales Prequel 01

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See the 20second video

In Curious Tales, CJ wrote:

“I was at sea–absolutely nothing was certain.

“Back home, at university, in my original Design Study Statement, I wrote that I would evaluate the use of water features in the Moroccan medina urban public realm, with a view toward deriving a metric of understanding their physical and cultural components.

“I must be frank. I almost failed this self-directed Moroccan design study.

“My time in Tangier took me to some deep places—some I had seen before. Others? Most peculiar…I didn’t know where I was. And others still where I was glad to be.”

But that is CJ’s tale; this prequel is my story.

A weak breeze and a few late wisteria flowers prepared me to be charmed by the view of the Strait of Gibraltar the way I like it–a safe distance, a comfortable distance away from that strangely aggressive magic, that throbbing aura of Joseph Conrad’s Africa. The more I thought about it, the more I could feel that hot African breath prickling the back of my neck.

I had been strolling lazily, inspecting the Gibraltar hotel where I was staying. I walked through the Barbary Bar out onto the shaded Wisteria Terrace. Nobody was sitting out there. Off season. Siesta time of day. Perfect quiet for me, perfect for daydreaming–my way of searching for the orange gardens of the Hesperides.

Curious Tales The Prequel is free to read on Kindle Vella at this link (https://bit.ly/3Hv6p2p)

And the story behind Curious Tales is Tangier Gardens and it is available on Amazon at this link (https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv)

Curious Tales Ebook will launch 15April at a huge discount: Sign up here for details (https://bit.ly/3q5lcaq)

Please share this with your like-minded friends especially if they are:

-A nature lover or a landscape aficionado;

-Curious about all things green—the environment, plants, gardening, horticulture; or

-Intrigued about the northwest Africa multi-cultural, mystical history of people and plants.

On the way to Morocco?

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WHAT HAPPENED BEFORE TANGIER

I had to edit the peculiar highlights of CJ’s term abroad design study adventures in Andalusia and among the Moors. Please read the Kindle Vella–3 episodes, and don’t be surprized, at: https://amzn.to/3ZHeuHX

CJ in Andalusia, “… the Alhambra: mocarabes, muquarnas, marquetry–geometry, patterns everywhere. Here it was all about the worlds within worlds of micro inspection. Everything intertwined–micro to micro–then micro to macro–then macro to macro–then macro to micro. And at the end, I had turned in on myself.”

CJ among the Moors: “I was at sea–absolutely nothing was certain. I must be frank. I almost failed my self-directed Moroccan design study.” 

Please read the Kindle Vella–3 episodes, and don’t be surprized, at: https://amzn.to/3ZHeuHX

Gardens? The Hesperides?

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The Rock? The Strait of Gibraltar?
An illustration from a 1922 edition John Milton’s Comus, illustrated by Arthur Rackham.

Myself, I went to North Africa once, and that was enough–too many people pressing in on me all the time–not my idea of a fun afternoon. I was more interested in nymphs, orange blossoms and golden apples in the Garden of the Hesperides.

Finding that garden though, has been one of those fun, but not really serious peccadillo challenges in my life. Good descriptions are hard to come by, what to speak of the garden itself.  I’ve never found it.  I’ve always come up empty. So this time, I figured since I was in the neighborhood–since I was in that hazy western Mediterranean–I figured I’d look for that garden again.

Read this entire short story, The Rock, for FREE on amazon Vella at this link: https://bit.ly/3Hv6p2p

Spring at the forest edge

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You may have been there before–maybe not.

Don’t we all feel joy at the unfurling of the leaves and flowers with the coming of spring?

What happens where the pasture flowers meet the leafy forest?

What is that beauty to the eyes–in the air? 

Does it emanate from the plants?

How does it make us feel better?

Find out for yourselves.

And it happened to CJ. In Tangier Gardens. 

He describes it. Read about the joy.

https://amzn.to/3HLrtyv

Just Published again? No, this time it’s spring

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Spring has been marching in–absolutely glorious!!

It dances. It sings.

The beauty of spring’s music hypnotises.

Don’t want it to ever finish–but it does.

And the magic is that it returns a year later. The more I think about that coming and going of beauty over time–the more I am inspired to write.

The first book I have written on the beauty of plants and the passage of time is Tangier Gardens.

Today is the last day that Tangier Gardens eBook can be picked up for FREE.

Sun and sand: MOROCCO

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CJ had visited Morocco once before. A long time ago . He was with his Mom. And he was only six. They spent three months on the beaches of Essaouira; but they never visited Tangier.

Now 20 years later he was on his way to Tangier. He thought he knew Morocco.

flahertylandscape is the root of Tangier Gardens.
Sun and Sand Morocco is a trailer that recalls CJ’s memories and some of his uncertainties.

Want more? Visit my Tangier Gardens Amazon author page.

CJ needs help

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PLANT PORTALS

***PLEASE NOTE***FLAHERTYLANDSCAPE HAS MOVED ITS URL TO A NEW DOMAIN–https://flahertylandscape.com CONTENT THE SAME ONLY A NEW URL. PLEASE CLICK THAT LINK.

Who is CJ?

He is the protagonist in the series, The Landscape Architect.

The Landscape Architect is the title of a series of fictional autobiographies. These are CJ’s autobiographies. In this series, CJ reveals the twists and turns in the development of his career as a professional landscape architect via his interactions with cultures, landscapes, gardens and plants of the world—where the unexpected and downright strange become daily facts of life.

Tangier Gardens is the debut novel in that series.

When you dig into Tangier Gardens, you will find a contemporary coming of age action novel about CJ (Christopher Janus), who like us is facing a broad range of distressing challenges.

CJ needs a break. He has been busting his hump full time six years at university with one more class till graduation.

He wanted just a few moments of repose before getting on with his career.

Didn’t happen. We all sadly know that story. But how did CJ deal with it? Tangier Gardens is that story.

CJ, studying landscape architecture, is into pedestrian towns and warm sandy beaches. For his last class, a term abroad design study, he’s on his way to Tangier, a town with sandy beaches on the Med and a historical pedestrian district, the medina. 

However, crossing the Strait of Gibraltar and landing in Tangier immediately upsets his planned easy observe-and-check-the-box design study. He is thrown off balance and he has to start all over from scratch–no more easy study.

With Andalusian legacies, languorous gardens, Moroccan markets and ancient medinas, Tangier Gardens brings Mediterranean life to the armchair traveler.

If you are: 

-A nature lover, into urban gardening or a landscape architecture aficionado;

-Curious about all things green–the environment, plants, gardens, landscape;

-Intrigued about the North African multi-cultural, mystical history of people and plants, then

–Tangier Gardens IS A MUST.

Tangier Gardens is the debut novel in the series The Landscape Architect. Is the landscape CJ’s worst enemy or is he his own worst enemy? Can he design his way out of this conundrum? Could coming of age be more awkward?

If CJ and his Tangier Gardens intrigue, then please send me your email address for information about free pre-launch copies and 2022 launch schedule.