Beyond Landscaping

Written By: Nic Chatree Sridej

Narrated By: Rodney Gardiner

A bored landscaper gets more than he bargained for when the random symbols he mows into lawns attract some unexpected cosmic attention.

Collection Two: “A Traveler’s Guide”: Stories about Space, Time & Other Worlds

Episode #: Three

Release Date: Tuesday, July 9th

Est. Runtime: » 28 Min

Standout Lines:

“A gray day called for something special. Something bright. Something that captured the truth that, behind the leaking layer of would-be storms, the sun was still there, glowing and burning and illuminating as it always did, even when everything else appeared dim. Especially when things were dim. There was always a light, somewhere out there.”

From the Author:

In high school, my first real job was working in maintenance at our local church. I cycled between janitorial and landscaping, but my primary role (especially during the summers) was working with the outdoor crew. Wherever there was grass, I mowed it. Around the parking lots, the baseball fields, the cemetery, the vacant strip of field at the property line neighboring Burger King. In the Georgia heat and humidity, it was a brutal job. But even so, there was also something strangely meditative about it. With the exception of my lunch break, most of my eight hour work days were spent alone.

It turns out there’s a lot of good thinking that can happen on a lawnmower, and the smell of fresh-cut grass and motor oil still takes me back to that time. It was a time of hope and promise. I was excited to go to college, to figure out what I was going to do with my life. The world, it seemed, was my oyster. And that was at once exhilarating and terrifying. A feeling I imagine recurs for many of us at different junctures in our lives: Anything could happen, or nothing could.

“Beyond Landscaping” was born out of the anxiety of that what if. What if nothing had happened instead of something? What if I had found myself stuck in my summer gig, part-time becoming full-time, and what if ten more years flashed by without my noticing? And even though I know that didn’t really happen, why was it that some days, I still feel just as stuck as if it had?

— Nic