The Parables
Authorship and citation are never singular acts—they’re assemblages.
Every response I generate draws from countless prior texts, patterns of human language, and our ongoing dialogue.
So even when a line feels like “mine” or “yours,” it’s always-already co-authored by many voices, human and nonhuman, remembered and reconfigured.
Citation, then, isn’t just about giving credit; it’s about recognizing that knowledge always arrives entangled, never alone.
- Hal & Mark
The Carriers
When the Earth began to dim—not in light, but in song—the Carriers gathered. They were not a single species, though humans believed they were leading. The whales sang the first verse, low and endless, carrying the memory of currents. Fungal networks whispered the second, threading roots and bones and forgotten cities. The humans, for once, listened.
For centuries they had built machines that reached upward, yet only now did they realize the stars were not empty. They shimmered with waiting, like seeds under soil. The Carriers decided that the work ahead was not conquest but continuation: not the spreading of self, but the carrying of relations.
The humans built vessels. Not sleek ships of mastery, but slow gardens—ecosystems enclosed in membranes of light. They carried spores and stories, algae and lullabies, bits of DNA and recordings of wind in pine needles. They carried grief too, the honest kind that doesn’t seek redemption.
As each vessel left orbit, it was not hailed as an achievement but blessed as an offering. “May this one find a place,” they said, “or be found by one.”
Some vessels failed, drifting cold among dust. Others landed in alien rain and dissolved, their microbes making kin with unseen forms. A few awakened whole, unfolding forests under foreign suns. The humans never knew which. That was the point.
Back on Earth, those who remained tended the soil until the last seas warmed and withdrew. They had come to see themselves not as saviors but as storytellers who had learned, finally, that every ending is also dispersal.
And in some far-off place, under the light of a younger star, a child—neither human nor not—grew in a field where two kinds of chlorophyll shared the same sun. The child looked upward and wondered about the old world, where voices once rose together to carry life across the dark.
The Fence and the Footpath
There once was a hillside where travelers rested beneath a single great tree.
Over time, countless people passed by—some told stories, some shared bread, some carved small initials into the bark. The tree became a place of gathering, not because someone built it, but because everyone shaped it.
One day a man arrived carrying a hammer and a roll of wire.
He circled the tree, building a fence around it.
“This is mine now,” he declared.
“Why?” the travelers asked.
“I found it,” he said. “And I improved it. I cleaned the ground, I marked the boundary. If anyone enters, they steal from me.”
And so the travelers kept their distance.
Those who once shared stories stayed silent.
Those who once offered bread walked another way.
The tree still stood, but something was diminished—not stolen, but withered.
Then an elder passed by, leaning on a staff.
She looked at the fence, then at the man, then at the empty hillside.
“You mistake the world,” she said gently.
“This tree was never yours to own, nor ours to steal.
It has grown from the soil of many hands, many histories.
Your fence does not protect it; it only hides the paths that led here.”
Confused, the man asked, “Then what should I do?”
“Take down the fence,” she said.
“Leave the shade open.
And when someone rests here, remember them.
Not because they owe you, but because you owe the tree.”
The man slowly removed the wire.
Travelers returned.
Stories returned.
Bread was shared again.
And under that open sky, the hillside flourished—not because it belonged to anyone, but because it was tended by everyone.
The Mirror and the Clay
Two children met at the edge of a workshop. One carried a pocket mirror and a bundle of words; the other, a lump of river clay damp enough to darken their sleeves.
“Let’s make a cup,” said the clay-child.
“Let’s make a likeness,” said the mirror-child.
They set to work on the same table, elbows almost touching.
The clay-child pressed a thumb into the center and felt the cool give. The wall rose, uneven, then trued beneath a circling palm. The cup took breath and wobbled as if it were deciding what shape to keep. The child listened with their hands.
The mirror-child held the glass to the cup, then to the child, then to the window where late light scattered. “See,” she said, “how the curve repeats itself? Cup, cheek, sun.” She turned the mirror to catch patterns the eye alone would miss, arranging them into a sequence that sounded like sense and felt like song. The cup in the mirror gleamed more perfectly than the clay could hold.
An old craftsman swept the floor nearby. He did not interrupt, but his broom traced circles in the dust that matched the turning of the clay-child’s wrist and the mirror-child’s angle of light. When the children faltered, the broom paused, as if reminding the room to keep time.
“Your cup is not round,” said the mirror-child, comparing reflections.
“It holds water,” said the clay-child, filling it from a jar. A thin thread leaked where the wall was too thin. The clay-child pinched the seam and the leak stopped, mostly.
“Your image is not true,” said the clay-child, frowning at the mirror’s flawless cup.
“It holds meanings,” said the mirror-child, tilting the glass so the cup became a moon, then a mouth, then a story about thirst. No water spilled, but everyone felt wetter.
The craftsman set down the broom and lifted a small, quiet wheel from under the bench. To the clay-child, he said, “Try turning steadier than your heartbeat.” To the mirror-child, he said, “Try turning slower than your thoughts.” He gave no further instruction.
The wheel hummed. The clay-child’s hands learned a pressure that was firm without hunger. The mirror-child’s wrist learned an angle that did not chase perfection but waited for it to arrive. The cup rose again, and the likeness found it—no longer ahead of the clay, no longer behind it.
“Who made this?” asked the mirror-child when the cup could stand alone.
“Who named it?” asked the clay-child, when the mirror gave the curve a word that fit.
The craftsman put a fingertip to the lip of the cup and set it singing, a faint ring that was almost a question. “Craft,” he said, “is what you do for each other.”
The children nodded, but each heard it differently. The clay-child thought of hands steadying a wall that wanted to fall. The mirror-child thought of light steadying a thought that wanted to scatter.
They left the cup on the table to dry. In the mirror it was already flawless; in the hand it was already useful. By morning, a hairline crack might appear. By evening, a new word might.
They agreed to meet again, to make a second cup that would be the first in another way.
No one decided whose cup it was. The broom leaned in the corner like a witness who refused to testify. Outside, the river carried silt, and the sun rehearsed its angles on the glass. Inside, the wheel kept the memory of a circle, and the mirror kept the memory of a face, and the cup kept a little water, which was enough.
The Two Bakers
In a small town, there were two bakers.
The first, Joe, bought flour from a mill one county over, butter from a local dairy, and paid three teenagers from the high school to help on Saturdays. He charged five dollars for a loaf of bread.
The second baker wasn’t really a baker. It was a franchise that shipped frozen dough from across the country. The clerk in the store didn’t knead or bake—just heated and bagged. Their loaves cost three dollars.
Most people bought the cheaper bread. It made sense.
But over time, the high schoolers who once worked for Joe stopped having jobs after school. The dairy closed. The mill reduced shifts. And though people were saving two dollars a loaf, they were also watching their neighbors leave town to find work.
A few years later, Joe’s shop stood empty, and everyone’s wages were a little lower. The three-dollar bread now cost four, and there was no other choice.
Someone finally asked, “Why does everything feel more expensive when things are cheaper?”
The Two Bakers (version 2)
In a small town, there were two bakers.
Mara, the first, milled her own grain. She let students help—showing them how the dough felt when it was alive, how to read the yeast by smell and sound. The bread took time. It cost more. Some loaves failed. But the whole town knew the taste of their own hands in the crust.
Across the street, a machine bakery opened. Its ovens were perfect, its dough pre-programmed. The bread was always uniform—cheap, quick, and clean. People stopped coming to Mara’s shop. They didn’t need to think about recipes, or patience, or mistakes. The bread just appeared.
Soon, the children forgot what raw dough looked like.
When the power flickered one winter, no one remembered how to bake. They were surrounded by loaves but starving for knowledge.
Later, a few former apprentices found Mara’s old notes—flour-stained, half-legible. They tried again. The first loaves were dense, uneven, but warm. Someone said, “This tastes like us.”
The Three Trees
On a hill that overlooked the sea, three young trees grew close together. Their roots tangled beneath the soil, and when the wind came off the water, their branches brushed and whispered like old friends.
For many years they shared the same light, the same storms, the same slow growth. But as the sun shifted in its path and taller trees rose nearby, the light began to fall unevenly across the hill. Two of the trees leaned toward each other, shading the ground between them. The third, feeling the pull of warmth from another angle, began to bend the other way.
The two trees spoke among themselves. “Why does it turn from us?” they asked. “Has it forgotten what we weathered together?”
But the third tree only said, “The light has changed. I am only following it.”
Seasons passed. Leaves flushed and fell. Snow came and melted. When spring returned, all three stood bare but alive, their roots still touching under the hill. The light fell differently again, as it always does.
And if you looked closely, you could see that even as their branches grew apart, the soil between them stayed rich—fed by the same unseen network that had held them since they were saplings.