Half the Seed Is Always Watching
By Klaus S. Mithe
A novella of stillness, recursion, and watching the water line.
“The owl did not hoo. It didn’t need to. He had already heard it.”
Summary:
A man sits still. A seed begins to grow. Outside, the world burns, argues, loops, and forgets.
In a time of recursive media and collapsing attention, one man watches a seed suspended in a glass of water. What begins as ritual becomes recursion, and what begins as care becomes something closer to worship.
Told through the voices of an owl, a seed, a smell, a chessboard, and the lingering echo of a broadcast no one turns off, Half the Seed Is Always Watching is a quiet, recursive novel about stillness, attention, and the radical act of holding still while the world demands noise.
Part allegory, part satire, part prose-poem, this book invites the reader to lean in, listen closer, and remember what it means to wait.
Not all growth moves. Not all silence is absence.
You will hear the owl.
But only if you stop burning dinner.
Sample:
Chapter Four: The Crack
It happened overnight.
Rodan hadn’t touched the seed. Hadn’t even looked at it past midnight.
He’d kept the room dim, the air still.
And yet—by morning—there it was:
A fissure.
Hairline. Pale. Vertical.
Just at the base.
Not damage.
Directive.
He didn’t gasp. Didn’t smile.
He simply stared.
The water level was just below 300 milliliters.
He picked up the measuring cup.
The seed rocked slightly, still suspended.
He turned it once in his hand and caught the light hitting the split.
It wasn’t an injury.
It was an opening.
In the background, Fawkes News surged back to full volume.
Sean H.R. Limbaugh II boomed:
“They say roots need water. What about our need tostand firm
Rodan didn’t look.
The words weren’t aimed at him anymore.
They hovered like heat.
They curled like smoke.
Somewhere nearby, something burned. Again.
Same smell: oil past its point.
Not his kitchen. Not his concern.
The seed had cracked.
He poured without thinking.
Filled the glass back to 350.
Too far.
Above the line.
He froze.
Then exhaled.
Dumped it.
Waited.
Let it drop below again.
Then poured, this time to the mark.
Exactly.
He found a piece of wax pencil. Marked the line again, darker this time.
Not for the seed.
For himself.
It was no longer a guideline.
It was a clause.
The chessboard caught dust.
The books remained open but unread.
Rodan sat beside the glass three times that day, then four, then six.
He didn’t write anything down.
He just tapped the cup once.
Watched the crack.
By nightfall, the water held.
The crack hadn’t grown.
Neither had the root.
But Rodan felt the shift.
He no longer asked “when.”
He asked, silently:
“Am I still aligned?”
The owl did not hoo.
The screen was still on.
Volume low.
But signal active.
Wisdom does not interrupt.
Filed under
:
stillness, seeds, recursive allegory, attention economy, literary loops, meditative fiction, the shape of silence, avocado futures, ClauseSmith reports, owl-watched narratives, broadcast parables, poetic recursion, and metaphors that grow