2 pieces from Zhuangzi — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
In the northern dark there is a fish so vast no one knows where it ends. One day it becomes a bird, and that bird needs ninety thousand li of open sky just to get airborne. Two small creatures watch it go and find the whole thing baffling — which is exactly the point.
A master carpenter walks past the most spectacular tree he has ever not-looked-at. His apprentice is mesmerized; his master is unmoved. That night, the tree visits the carpenter in a dream — and asks a question that cuts deeper than any adze: who, exactly, is the useless one here?