Jonathan Livingston Seagull 2

Part Two

 

 

 

So this is heaven, he thought, and he had to smile at himself. It was

hardly respectful to analyze heaven in the very moment that one flies up

to enter it.

As he came from Earth now, above the clouds and in close formation

with the two brilliant gulls, he saw that his own body was growing as

bright as theirs. True, the same young Jonathan Seagull was there that had

always lived behind his golden eyes, but the outer form had changed.

It felt like a seagull body, but alreadv it flew far better than his

old one had ever flown. Why, with half the effort, he thought, I’ll get

twice the speed, twice the performance of my best days on Earth!

His feathers glowed brilliant white now, and his wings were smooth

and perfect as sheets of polished silver. He began, delightedly, to learn

about them, to press power into these new wings.

At two hundred fifty mlles per hour he felt that he was nearing his

level-flight maximum speed. At two hundred seventy-three he thought that

he was flying as fast as he could fly, and he was ever so faintly

disappointed. There was a limit to how much the new body could do, and

though it was much faster than his old level-flight record, it was still a

limit that would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, there

should be no limits.

The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, “Happy landings,

Jonathan,” and vanished into thin air.

He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very few

seagulls were working the updrafts on the cliffs. Away off to the north,

at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New sights, new thoughts, new

questions. Why so few gulls? Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And why

am I so tired, all at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be

tired, or to sleep.

Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth was falling

away. Earth had been a place where he had learned much, of course, but the

details were blurred – something about fighting for food, and being

Outcast.

The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none saying a

word. He felt only that he was welcome and that this was home. It had been

a bigday for him, a day whose sunrise he no longer remembered.

He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop an inch in

the air, then dropping lightly to the sand, The other gulls landed too,

but not one of them so much as flapped a feather. They swung into the

wind, bright wings outstretched, then somehow they changed the curve of

their feathers until they had stopped in the same instant their feet

touched the ground. It was beautiful control, but now Jonathan was just

too tired to try it. Standiug there on the beach, still without a word

spoken, he was asleep.

In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as much to

learn about flight in this place as there had been in the life behind him.

But with a difference. Here were gulls who thought as he thought, For each

of them, the most important thing in living was to reach out and touch

perfection in that which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. They

were magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour every

day practicing flight, testing advanced aeronautics.

For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had come

from, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes tightly shut to the

joy of flight, using its wings as means to the end of finding and fighting

for food. But now and then, just for a moment, he remembered.

He remembered it one morning when he was out with his instructor,

while they rested on the beach after a session of folded-wing snap rolls.

“Where is everybody, Sullivan?” he asked silently, quite at home now

with the easy telepathy that these gulls used instead of screes and

gracks. “Why aren’t there more of us here? Why, where I came from there

were.. “

“… thousands and thousands of gulls. I know. ” Sullivan shook his

head. “The only answer I can see, Jonathan, is that you are pretty well a

one-in-a-million bird. Most of us came along ever so slowly. We went from

one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgettiug right

away where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for

the moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through

before we even gor the first idea that there is more to life than eating,

or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand!

And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such

a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our

purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. The same

rule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next world through what we

learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this

one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.”

He stretched his wings and turned to face the wind. “But you, Jon,”

he said, “learned so much at one time that you didn’t have to go through a

thousand lives to reach this one.”

In a moment they were airborne again, practicing. The formation

point-roils were difficult, for through the inverted half Jonathan had to

think upside down, reversing the curve of his wing, and reversing it

exactly in harmony with his instructor’s.

“Let’s try it again.” Sullivan said over and over: “Let’s try it

again.” Then, finally, “Good.” And they began practicing outside loops.

 

 

One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood together on

the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in hand and walked to

the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon to be moving beyond this world.

“Chiang…” he said a little nervously.

The old seagull looked at him kindly. “Yes, my son?” Instead of being

enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by it; he could outfly any

gull in the Flock, and he had learned skills that the others were only

gradually coming to know.

“Chiang, this world isn’t heaven at all, is it?” The Elder smiled in

the moonlight. “You are learning again, Jonathan Seagull,” he said.

“Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is there no such

place as heaven?”

“No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, and it

is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.” He was silent for a moment. “You

are a very fast flier, aren’t you?”

“I… I enjoy speed,” Jonathan said, taken aback but proud that the

Elder had noticed.

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you

touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a

million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit,

and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being

there.”

Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the water’s edge

fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then he vanished again

and stood, in the same millisecond, at Jonathan’s shoulder. “It’s kind of

fun,” he said.

 

 

Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. “How do you do

that? What does it feel like? How far can you go?”

“You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to go,” the

Elder said. “I’ve gone everywhere and everywhen I can think of.” He looked

across the sea. “It’s strange. The gulls who scorn perfection for the sake

of travel go nowhere, slowly. Those who put aside travel for the sake of

perfection go anywhere, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn’t a

place or a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. Heaven

is…”

“Can you teach me to fly like that?” Jonathan Seagull trembled to

conquer another unknown.

“Of course if you wish to learn.”

“I wish. When can we start?”.

“We could start now if you’d like.”

“I want to learn to fly like that,” Jonathan said and a strange light

glowed in his eyes. “Tell me what to do,”

Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so carefully.

“To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he said, “you must begin

by knowing that you have already arrived …”

The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop seeing

himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a forty-two inch

wingspan and performance that could be plotted on a chart. The trick was

to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number,

everywhere at once across space and time.

 

 

Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise

till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a feather width

from his spot.

“Forget about faith!” Chiang said it time and again. “You didn’t need

faith to fly, you needed to understand flying.This is jast the same. Now

try again …”

Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his eyes,

concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been telling him. “Why,

that’s true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!” He felt a great shock of

joy.

“Good!” said Chiang and there was victory in his voice.

Jonathan opened his eyes. He stood alone with the Elder on a totally

different seashore – trees down to the water’s edge, twin yellow suns

turning overhead.

“At last you’ve got the idea,” Chiang said, “but your control needs a

little work… “

Jonathan was stunned. “Where are we?”

Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the Elder brushed

the question aside. “We’re on some planet, obviously, with a green sky and

a double star for a sun.”

Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had made since

he had left Earth. “IT WORKS!”

“Well, of course, it works, Jon.” said Chiang. “It always works, when

you know what you’re doing. Now about your control…”

By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked at

Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen him disappear

from where he had been rooted for so long.

He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. “I’m the

newcomer here! I’m just beginning! It is I who must learn from you!”

“I wonder about that, Jon,” said Sullivan standing near. “You have

less fear of learning than any gull I’ve seen in ten thousand years. “The

Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in embarrassment.

“We can start working with time if you wish,” Chiang said, “till you

can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the

most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready

to begin to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love.”

A month went by, or something that felt about like a month, and

Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always had learned quickly from

ordinary experience, and now, the special student of the Elder Himself, he

took in new ideas like a streamlined feathered computer.

But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been talking

quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop their learning and

their practicing and their striving to understand more of the perfect

invisible principle of all life. Then, as he spoke, his feathers went

brighter and brighter and at last turned so brilliant that no gull could

look upon him.

“Jonathan,” he said, and these were the last words that he spoke,

“keep working on love.”

When they could see again, Chiang was gone.

As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again

of the Earth from which he had come. If he had known there just a tenth,

just a hundredth, of what he knew here, how much more life would have

meant! He stood on the sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back

there who might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the

meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb from a

rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one made Outcast for speaking

his truth in the face of the Flock. And the more Jonathan practiced his

kindness lessons, and the more he worked to know the nature of love, the

more he wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past,

Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own way of

demonstrating love was to give something of the truth that he had seen to

a gull who asked only a chance to see truth for himself.

Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the others to

learn, was doubtful.

“Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of the gulls

in your old time would listen to you now? You know the proverb, and it’s

true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Those gulls where you came

from are standing on the ground, squawking and fighting among themselves.

They’re a thousand miles from heaven – and you say you want to show them

heaven from where they stand! Jon, they can’t see their own wingtips! Stay

here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are high enough to see what

you have to tell them.” He was quiet for a moment, and then he said, “What

if Chiang had gone back to his old worlds? Where would you have been

today?”

The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right The gull

sees farthest who flies highest.

Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, who were all

very bright and quick with their lessons. But the old feeling came back,

and he couldn’t help but think that there might be one or two gulls back

on Earth who would be able to learn, too. How much more would he have

known by now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was Outcast!

“Sully, I must go back ” he said at last “Your students are doing

well. They can help you bring the newcomers along.”

Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. “I think I’ll miss you,

Jonathan,” was all he said.

“Sully, for shame!” Jonathan said in reproach, “and don’t be foolish!

What are we trying to practice every day? If our friendship depends on

things like space and time, then when we finally overcome space and time,

we’ve destroyed our own brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have

left is Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the

middle of Here and Now, don’t you think that we might see each other once

or twice?”

Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. “You crazy bird,” he

said kindly. “If anybody can show someone on the ground how to see a

thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston Seagull.” He looked at the

sand. “Good-bye, Jon, my friend.”

“Good bye, Sully. We’ll meet again.” And with that, Jonathan held in

thought an image of the great gull flocks on the shore of another time,

and he knew with practiced ease that he was not bone and feather but a

perfect idea of freedom and flight, limited by nothing at all.

 

 

Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he knew that

no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any Flock, or with so much

injustice.

“I don’t care what they say,” he thought fiercely, and his vision

blurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. “There’s so much more to

flying than just flapping around from place to place! A… a… mosquito

does that! One little barrel roll around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and

I’m Outcast! Are they blind? Can’t they see? Can’t they think of the glory

that it’ll be when we really learn to fly?

“I don’t care what they think. I’ll show them what flying is! I’ll be

pure Outlaw, if that’s the way they want it. And I’ll make them so

sorry…”

The voice came inside his own head, and though it was very gentle, it

startled him so much that he faltered and stumbled in the air.

“Don’t be harsh on them, Fletcher Seagull. In casting you out, the

other gulls have only hurt themselves, and one day they will know this,

and one day they will see what you see. Forgive them, and help them to

understand.”

An inch from his right wingtip flew the most brilliant white gull in

all the world, gliding effortlessly along, not moving a feather, at what

was very nearly Fletcher’s top speed.

There was a moment of chaos in the young bird. “What’s going on? Am I

mad? Am I dead? What is this?”

Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demanding an

answer. “Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?”

“YES, I WANT TO FLY!”.

“Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly so much that you will

forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day and work to help

them know?”

There was no lying to this magnificent skillful being, no matter how

proud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull.

“I do ” he said softly.

“Then, Fletch,” that bright creature said to him, and the voice was

very kind, “let’s begin with Level Flight….”

Jonathan Livingston Seagull 1

Оцените этот текст:

Richard Bach. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

To the real Jonathan Seagull,

who lives within us all.

 

 

 

Part One

 

It was morning, and the new sun sparkled gold across the ripples of a

gentle sea. A mile from shore a fishing boat chummed the water. and the

word for Breakfast Flock flashed through the air, till a crowd of a

thousand seagulls came to dodge and fight for bits of food. It was another

busy day beginning.

But way off alone, out by himself beyond boat and shore, Jonathan

Livingston Seagull was practicing. A hundred feet in the sky he lowered

his webbed feet, lifted his beak, and strained to hold a painful hard

twisting curve through his wings. The curve meant that he would fly

slowly, and now he slowed until the wind was a whisper in his face, until

the ocean stood still beneath him. He narrowed his eyes in fierce

concentration, held his breath, forced one… single… more… inch…

of… curve… Then his featliers ruffled, he stalled and fell.

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air

is for them disgrace and it is dishonor.

But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings

again in that trembling hard curve – slowing, slowing, and stalling once

more – was no ordinary bird.

Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest facts of

flight – how to get from shore to food and back again. For most gulls, it

is not flying that matters, but eating. For this gull, though, it was not

eating that mattered, but flight. More than anything else. Jonathan

Livingston Seagull loved to fly.

This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make one’s self

popular with other birds. Even his parents were dismayed as Jonathan spent

whole days alone, making hundreds of low-level glides, experimenting.

 

 

He didn’t know why, for instance, but when he flew at altitudes less

than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay in the air longer,

with less effort. His glides ended not with the usual feet-down splash

into the sea, but with a long flat wake as he touched the surface with his

feet tightly streamlined against his body. When he began sliding in to

feet-up landings on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the

sand, his parents were very much dismayed indeed.

“Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be like the

rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying to the pelicans,

the alhatross? Why don’t you eat? Son, you’re bone and feathers!”

“I don’t mind being bone and feathers mom. I just want to know what I

can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just want to know.”

“See here Jonathan ” said his father not unkindly. “Winter isn’t far

away. Boats will be few and the surface fish will be swimming deep. If you

must study, then study food, and how to get it. This flying business is

all very well, but you can’t eat a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that

the reason you fly is to eat.”

Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried to behave

like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and fighting with the

flock around the piers and fishing boats, diving on scraps of fish and

bread. But he couldn’t make it work.

It’s all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a hard-won

anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be spending all this

time learning to fly. There’s so much to learn!

 

 

It wasn’t long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, far out

at sea, hungry, happy, learning.

The subject was speed, and in a week’s practice he learned more about

speed than the fastest gull alive.

From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he could, he

pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the waves, and learned why

seagulls don’t make blazing steep pewer-dives. In just six seconds he was

moving seventy miles per hour, the speed at which one’s wing goes unstable

on the upstroke.

Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at the very

peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed.

Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, then push

over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, his left wing

stalled on an upstroke, he’d roll violently left, stall his right wing

recovering, and flick like fire into a wild tumbling spin to the right.

He couldn’t be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times he tried,

and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles per hour, he burst

into a churning mass of feathers, out of control, crashing down into the

water.

The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold the wings

still at high speeds – to flap up to fifty and then hold the wings still.

From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak

straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed fifty

miles per hour. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds

he had blurred through ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world

speed record for seagulls!

But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pullout, the

instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped into that same

terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety miles per hour it hit him

like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in midair and smashed down into a

brickhard sea.

When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in moonlight

on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged bars of lead, but the

weight of failure was even heavier on his back. He wished, feebly, that

the weight could be just enough to drug him gently down to the bottom, and

end it all.

As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sounded within

him. There’s no way around it. I am a seagull. I am limited by my nature.

If I were meant to learn so much about flying, I’d have charts for brains.

If I were meant to fly at speed, I’d have a falcon’s short wings, and live

on mice instead of fish. My father was right. I must forget this

foolishness. I must fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a

poor limited seagull.

The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at

night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he vowed, he would be a

normal gull. It would make everyone happier.

He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew toward the land,

grateful for what he had learned about work-saving low-altitude flying.

But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done with

everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other seagull, and I will

fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his

wings harder, pressing for shore.

He felt better for his decision to be just another one of the Flock.

There would be no ties now to the force that had driven him to learn,

there would be no more challenge and no more failure. And it was pretty,

just to stop thinking, and fly through the dark, toward the lights above

the beach.

Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the

dark!

Jonathan was not alert to listen. It’s pretty, he thought. The moon

and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing out little beacon-trails

through the night, and all so peaceful and still…

Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant to fly in

the dark, you’d have the eyes of an owl! You’d have charts for brains!

You’d have a falcon’s short wings!

There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan Livingston

Seagull – blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished.

Short wings. A falcon’s short wings!

That’s the answer! What a fool I’ve been! All I need is a tiny little

wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips

alone! Short wings!

He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and without a

moment for thought of failure and death, he brought his forewings tightly

in to his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wingtips

extended into the wind, and fell into a vertical dive.

The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles per hour,

ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The wing-strain now at a

hundred and forty miles per hour wasn’t nearly as hard as it had been

before at seventy, and with the faintest twist of his wingtips he eased

out of the dive and shot above the waves, a gray cannonball under the

moon.

He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. A hundred

forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive from five thousand feet

instead of two thousand, I wonder how fast..

His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away in that great

swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the promises he had made

himself. Such promises are only for the gulls that accept the ordinary.

One who has touched excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of

promise.

By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practicing again. From five thousand feet

the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water, Breakfast Flock was

a faint cloud of dust motes, circling.

He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud that his

fear was under control. Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings,

extended his short, angled wingtips, and plunged direcfly toward the sea.

By the time he passed four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity,

the wind was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move no

faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred fourteen miles per

hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings unfolded at that speed be’d

be blown into a million tiny shreds of seagull. But the speed was power,

and the speed was joy, and the speed was pure beauty.

He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding and

blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of gulls tilting

and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path.

He couldn’t stop; he didn’t know yet even how to turn at that speed.

Collision would be instant death.

And so he shut his eyes.

It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Ionathan

Livingston Seagull fired directly through the center of Breakfast Flock,

ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great

roaring shriek of wind and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him

this once, and no one was killed.

By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky he was

still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per hour. When he had

slowed to twenty and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a

crumb on the sea, four thousand feet below.

His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at two hundred

fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment

in the history of the Flock, and in that moment a new age opened for

Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his lonely practice area, folding his wings

for a dive from eight thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover

how to turn.

A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an inch,

gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed. Before he learned this,

however, he found that moving more than one feather at that speed will

spin you like a ritIe ball… and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics

of any seagull on earth.

He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but flew on

past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the point roll, the

inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel.

 

 

When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was full

night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he flew a loop to

landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. When they hear of it, he

thought, of the Breakthrough, they’ll be wild with joy. How much more

there is now to living! Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the

fishing boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of

ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and

intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly!

The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise.

The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he landed, and

apparently had been so flocked for some time. They were, in fact, waiting.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Center!” The Elder’s words

sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Center meant only great

shame or great honor. Stand to Center for Honor was the way the gulls’

foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock

this morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honors. I have no

wish to be leader. I want only to share what I’ve found, to show those

horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped forward.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” said the Elder, “Stand to Center for

Shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!”

It felt like being hit with a board. His knees went weak, his

feathers sagged, there was roaring in his ears. Centered for shame?

Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can’t understand! They’re wrong,

they’re wrong!

“… for his reckless irresponsibility ” the solemn voice intoned,

“violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family…”

To be centered for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull

society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs.

“… one day Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn that

irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the unknowable,

except that we are put into this world to eat, to stay alive as long as we

possibly can.”

A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it was

Jonathan’s voice raised. “Irresponsibility? My brothers!” he cried. “Who

is more responsible than a gull who finds and follows a meaning, a higher

purpose for life? For a thousand years we have scrabbled after fish heads,

but now we have a reason to live – to learn, to discover, to be free! Give

me one chance, let me show you what I’ve found…”

The Flock might as well have been stone.

“The Brotherhood is broken,” the gulls intoned together, and with one

accord they solemnly closed their ears and turned their backs upon him.

Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew way

out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not solituile, it was that

other gulls refused to believe the glory of flight that awaited them; they

refused to open their eyes and see. He learned more each day. He learned

that a streamlined high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and

tasty fish that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no

longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He learned to

sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind,

covering a hundred miles from sunset to sunrise. With the same inner

control, he flew through heavy sea-fogs and climbed above them into

dazzling clear skies… in the very times when every other gull stood on

the ground, knowing nothing but mist and rain. He learned to ride the high

winds far inland, to dine there on delicate insects.

What he had once hoped for the Flock, he now gained for himself

alone; he learned to fly, and was not sorry for the price that he had

paid. Jonathan Seagull discovered that boredom and fear and anger are the

reasons that a gull’s life is so short, and with these gone from his

thought, he lived a long fine life indeed.

They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding peaceful

and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that appeared at his

wings were pure as starlight, and the glow from them was gentle and

friendly in the high night air. But most lovely of all was the skill with

which they flew, their wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from

his own. Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that no

gull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a single mile per

hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed with him, smoothly, locked

in position. They knew about slow flying.

He folded his wings, rolled and dropped in a dive to a hundred ninety

miles per hour. They dropped with him, streaking down in flawless

formation.

At last he turned that speed straight up into a long vertical

slow-roll. They rolled with him, smiling.

He recovered to level flight and was quiet for a time before he

spoke. “Very well,” he said, “who are you?”

“We’re from your Flock, Jonathan. We are your brothers.” The words

were strong and calm. “We’ve come to take you higher, to take you home.”

“Home I have none. Flock I have none. I am Outcast. And we fly now at

the peak of the Great Mountain Wind. Beyond a few hundred feet, I can lift

this old body no higher.”

“But you can Jonathan. For you have learned. One school is finished,

and the time has come for another to begin.”

As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding lighted

that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He could fly higher,

and it was time to go home.

He gave one last look across the sky, across that magnificent silver

land where he had learned so much.

“I’m ready ” he said at last.

And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two starbright gulls to

disappear into a perfect dark sky.

Halo dunia!

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