5. 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 practising. 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 feathers 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 dishonour. But Jonathan Livingston Seagull, unashamed, stretching his wings again in that trembling hard curve - slowing, slowing, and stalling once more - was no ordinary bird. 6. Most gulls don’t bother to learn more than the simplest isn’t far away. Boats will be few, and the surface fish will be facts of flight — how to get from shore to food and back again. swimming deep. If you must study, then study food, and how For most gulls, it is not flying that matters, but eating. For this to get it. This flying business is all very well, but you can’t eat gull, though, it was not eating that mattered, but flight. More a glide, you know. Don’t you forget that the reason you fly is than anything else, Jonathan Livingston Seagull loved to fly. to eat.” This kind of thinking, he found, is not the way to make Jonathan nodded obediently. For the next few days he tried one’s self popular with other birds. Even his parents were dis- to behave like the other gulls; he really tried, screeching and mayed as Jonathan spent whole days alone, making hundreds fighting with the flock around the piers and fishing boats, of low-level glides, experimenting. diving on scraps of fish and bread. But he couldn’t make it He didn’t know why, for instance, but when he flew at alti- work. tudes less than half his wingspan above the water, he could stay It’s all so pointless, he thought, deliberately dropping a in the air longer, with less effort. His glides ended not with the hard-won anchovy to a hungry old gull chasing him. I could be usual feet-down splash into the sea, but with a long flat wake spending all this time learning to fly. There’s so much to learn! as he touched the surface with his feet tightly streamlined It wasn’t long before Jonathan Gull was off by himself again, against his body. When he began sliding in to feet-up landings far out at sea, hungry, happy, learning. on the beach, then pacing the length of his slide in the sand, The subject was speed, and in a week’s practice he learned his parents were very much dismayed indeed. more about speed than the fastest gull alive. “Why, Jon, why?” his mother asked. “Why is it so hard to be From a thousand feet, flapping his wings as hard as he like the rest of the flock, Jon? Why can’t you leave low flying could, he pushed over into a blazing steep dive toward the to the pelicans, the albatross? Why don’t you eat? Jon, you’re waves, and learned why seagulls don’t make blazing steep bone and feathers!” power-dives. In just six seconds he was moving seventy miles “I don’t mind being bone and feathers, Mum. I just want to per hour, the speed at which one’s wing goes unstable on the know what I can do in the air and what I can’t, that’s all. I just upstroke. want to know.” Time after time it happened. Careful as he was, working at “See here, Jonathan,” said his father, not unkindly. “Winter the very peak of his ability, he lost control at high speed. 7. Climb to a thousand feet. Full power straight ahead first, When he came to, it was well after dark, and he floated in then push over, flapping, to a vertical dive. Then, every time, moonlight on the surface of the ocean. His wings were ragged his left wing stalled on an upstroke, he’d roll violently left, bars of lead, but the weight of failure was even heavier on his stall his right wing recovering, and flick like fire into a wild back. He wished, feebly, that the weight could be just enough tumbling spin to the right. to drag him gently down to the bottom, and end it all. He couldn’t be careful enough on that upstroke. Ten times As he sank low in the water, a strange hollow voice sound- he tried, and all ten times, as he passed through seventy miles ed within him. There’s no way around it. I am a seagull. I am per hour, he burst into a churning mass of feathers, out of limited by my nature. If I were meant to learn so much about control, crashing down into the water. flying, I’d have charts for brains. If I were meant to fly at speed, The key, he thought at last, dripping wet, must be to hold I’d have a falcon’s short wings, and live on mice instead of fish. the wings still at high speeds — to flap up to fifty and then hold My father was right. I must forget this foolishness. I must fly the wings still. home to the Flock and be content as I am, as a poor limited From two thousand feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, seagull. beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a moment he passed fifty miles per hour. It took tremendous seagull at night is on shore, and from this moment forth, he strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he had blurred through vowed, he would be a normal gull. It would make everyone ninety miles per hour. Jonathan had set a world speed record happier. for seagulls! He pushed wearily away from the dark water and flew But victory was short-lived. The instant he began his pull- toward the land, grateful for what he had learned about work- out, the instant he changed the angle of his wings, he snapped saving low-altitude flying. into that same terrible uncontrolled disaster, and at ninety But no, he thought. I am done with the way I was, I am done miles per hour it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull with everything I learned. I am a seagull like every other sea- exploded in midair and smashed down into a brick-hard sea. gull, and I will fly like one. So he climbed painfully to a hundred feet and flapped his wings harder, pressing for shore. 8. He felt better for his decision to be just another one of The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy miles the flock. There would be no ties now to the force that had per hour, ninety, a hundred and twenty and faster still. The driven him to learn, there would be no more challenge and no wing-strain now at a hundred and forty miles per hour wasn’t more failure. And it was pretty, just to stop thinking, and fly nearly as hard as it had been before at seventy, and with the through the dark, toward the lights above the beach. faintest twist of his wingtips he eased out of the dive and shot Dark! The hollow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in above the waves, a grey cannonball under the moon. the dark! He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. Jonathan was not alert to listen. It’s pretty, he thought. A hundred forty miles per hour! And under control! If I dive The moon and the lights twinkling on the water, throwing from five thousand feet instead of two thousand, I wonder how out little beacon-trails through the night, and all so peaceful fast ... and still ... His vows of a moment before were forgotten, swept away Get down! Seagulls never fly in the dark! If you were meant in that great swift wind. Yet he felt guiltless, breaking the to fly in the dark, you’d have the eyes of an owl! You’d have promises he had made himself. Such promises are only for charts for brains! You’d have a falcon’s short wings! the gulls that accept the ordinary. One who has touched There in the night, a hundred feet in the air, Jonathan excellence in his learning has no need of that kind of promise. Livingston Seagull — blinked. His pain, his resolutions, vanished. By sunup, Jonathan Gull was practising again. From five Short wings. A falcon’s short wings! thousand feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue That’s the answer! What a fool I’ve been! All I need is a tiny water, Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust motes, circling. little wing, all I need is to fold most of my wings and fly on just He was alive, trembling ever so slightly with delight, proud the tips alone! Short wings! that his fear was under control. Then without ceremony he He climbed two thousand feet above the black sea, and hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wingtips, without a moment for thought of failure and death, he brought and plunged directly toward the sea. By the time he passed his forewings tightly in to his body, left only the four thousand feet he had reached terminal velocity, the wind narrow swept daggers of his wingtips extended into the wind, was a solid beating wall of sound against which he could move and fell into a vertical dive. no faster. He was flying now straight down, at two hundred 9. fourteen miles per hour. He swallowed, knowing that if his moment a new age opened for Jonathan Gull. Flying out to his wings unfolded at that speed he’d be blown into a million tiny lonely practice area, folding his wings for a dive from eight shreds of seagull. But the speed was power, and the speed was thousand feet, he set himself at once to discover how to turn. joy, and the speed was pure beauty. A single wingtip feather, he found, moved a fraction of an He began his pullout at a thousand feet, wingtips thudding inch, gives a smooth sweeping curve at tremendous speed. and blurring in that gigantic wind, the boat and the crowd of Before he learned this, however, he found that moving more gulls tilting and growing meteor-fast, directly in his path. than one feather at that speed will spin you like a rifle ball ... He couldn’t stop; he didn’t know yet even how to turn at and Jonathan had flown the first aerobatics of any seagull on that speed. earth. Collision would be instant death. He spared no time that day for talk with other gulls, but And so he shut his eyes. flew on past sunset. He discovered the loop, the slow roll, the It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that point roll, the inverted spin, the gull bunt, the pinwheel. Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the centre of Breakfast Flock, ticking off two hundred twelve miles per hour, eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek of wind When Jonathan Seagull joined the Flock on the beach, it was and feathers. The Gull of Fortune smiled upon him this once, full night. He was dizzy and terribly tired. Yet in delight he and no one was killed. flew a loop to landing, with a snap roll just before touchdown. By the time he had pulled his beak straight up into the sky When they hear of it, he thought, of the Breakthrough, they’ll he was still scorching along at a hundred and sixty miles per be wild with joy. How much more there is now to living! hour. When he had slowed to twenty and stretched his wings Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing again at last, the boat was a crumb on the sea, four thousand boats, there’s a reason to life! We can lift ourselves out of igno- feet below. rance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and His thought was triumph. Terminal velocity! A seagull at intelligence and skill. We can be free! We can learn to fly! two hundred fourteen miles per hour! It was a breakthrough, the greatest single moment in the history of the Flock, and in that 10. The years ahead hummed and glowed with promise. that irresponsibility does not pay. Life is the unknown and the The gulls were flocked into the Council Gathering when he unknowable, except that we are put into this world to eat, to landed, and apparently had been so flocked for some time. stay alive as long as we possibly can.” They were, in fact, waiting. A seagull never speaks back to the Council Flock, but it was “Jonathan Livingston Seagull! Stand to Centre!” The Jonathan’s voice raised. “Irresponsibility? My brothers!” he Elder’s words sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand cried. “Who is more responsible than a gull who finds and to Centre meant only great shame or great honour. Stand to follows a meaning, a higher purpose for life? For a thousand Centre for Honour was the way the gulls’ foremost leaders years we have scrabbled after fish heads, but now we have a were marked. Of course, he thought, the Breakfast Flock this reason to live — to learn, to discover, to be free! Give me one morning; they saw the Breakthrough! But I want no honours. chance, let me show you what I’ve found ...” I have no wish to be leader. I want only to share what I’ve The Flock might as well have been stone. found, to show those horizons out ahead for us all. He stepped “The Brotherhood is broken,” the gulls intoned together, forward. and with one accord they solemnly closed their ears and “Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” said the Elder, “Stand to turned their backs upon him. Centre 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 a roaring in his ears. Centred for Jonathan Seagull spent the rest of his days alone, but he flew shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can’t understand! way out beyond the Far Cliffs. His one sorrow was not They’re wrong, they’re wrong! solitude, it was that other gulls refused to believe the glory of “... for his reckless irresponsibility,” the solemn voice flight that awaited them; they refused to open their eyes and intoned, “violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull see. Family ...” He learned more each day. He learned that a streamlined To be centred for shame meant that he would be cast out of high-speed dive could bring him to find the rare and tasty fish gull society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs. that schooled ten feet below the surface of the ocean: he no “... one day, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, you shall learn longer needed fishing boats and stale bread for survival. He 11. learned to sleep in the air, setting a course at night across the offshore wind, covering a hundred miles from sunset to sun- rise. 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, know- ing 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. 12. They came in the evening, then, and found Jonathan gliding “But you can, Jonathan. For you have learned. One school peaceful and alone through his beloved sky. The two gulls that is finished, and the time has come for another to begin.” appeared at his wings were pure as starlight, and the glow As it had shined across him all his life, so understanding from them was gentle and friendly in the high night air. But lighted that moment for Jonathan Seagull. They were right. He most lovely of all was the skill with which they flew, their could fly higher, and it was time to go home. wingtips moving a precise and constant inch from his own. He gave one last long look across the sky, across that Without a word, Jonathan put them to his test, a test that magnificent silver land where he had learned so much. no gull had ever passed. He twisted his wings, slowed to a “I’m ready,” he said at last. single mile per hour above stall. The two radiant birds slowed And Jonathan Livingston Seagull rose with the two star- with him, smoothly, locked in position. They knew about slow bright gulls to disappear into a perfect dark sky. flying. He folded his wings, rolled, and dropped in a dive to a hun- dred 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.” 13. PART TWO 14. SO THIS IS HEAVEN, HE THOUGHT, AND HE HAD TO SMILE at himself. It was hardly respectful to analyse 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 already 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 miles 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 15. to how much the new body could do, and though it was much then somehow they changed the curve of their feathers until faster than his old level-flight record, it was still a limit that they had stopped in the same instant their feet touched the would take great effort to crack. In heaven, he thought, there ground. It was beautiful control, but now Jonathan was just should be no limits. too tired to try it. Standing there on the beach, still without a The clouds broke apart, his escorts called, “Happy landings, word spoken, he was asleep. Jonathan,” and vanished into thin air. In the days that followed, Jonathan saw that there was as He was flying over a sea, toward a jagged shoreline. A very much to learn about flight in this place as there had been in the few seagulls were working the updraughts on the cliffs. Away life behind him. But with a difference. Here were gulls who off to the north, at the horizon itself, flew a few others. New thought as he thought. For each of them, the most important sights, new thoughts, new questions. Why so few gulls? thing in living was to reach out and touch perfection in that Heaven should be flocked with gulls! And why am I so tired, all which they most loved to do, and that was to fly. They were at once? Gulls in heaven are never supposed to be tired, or to magnificent birds, all of them, and they spent hour after hour sleep. every day practising flight, testing advanced aeronautics. Where had he heard that? The memory of his life on Earth For a long time Jonathan forgot about the world that he had was falling away. Earth had been a place where he had learned come from, that place where the Flock lived with its eyes much, of course, but the details were blurred — something tightly shut to the joy of flight, using its wings as means to the about fighting for food, and being Outcast. end of finding and fighting for food. But now and then, just for The dozen gulls by the shoreline came to meet him, none a moment, he remembered. saying a word. He felt only that he was welcome and that this He remembered it one morning when he was out with his was home. It had been a big day for him, a day whose sunrise instructor, while they rested on the beach after a session of he no longer remembered. folded-wing snap rolls. He turned to land on the beach, beating his wings to stop “Where is everybody, Sullivan?” he asked silently, quite at an inch in the air, then dropping lightly to the sand. The other home now with the easy telepathy that these gulls used instead gulls landed too, but not one of them so much as flapped a of screes and gracks. “Why aren’t there more of us here? Why, feather. They swung into the wind, bright wings outstretched, where I came from there were ...” 16. “... thousands and thousands of gulls. I know.” Sullivan “Let’s try it again,” Sullivan said, over and over: “Let’s try it shook his head. “The only answer I can see, Jonathan, is that again.” Then, finally, “Good.” And they began practising you are pretty well a one-in-a-million bird. Most of us came outside loops. along ever so slowly. We went from one world into another that was almost exactly like it, forgetting right away where we had come from, not caring where we were headed, living for One evening the gulls that were not night-flying stood the moment. Do you have any idea how many lives we must together on the sand, thinking. Jonathan took all his courage in have gone through before we even got the first idea that there hand and walked to the Elder Gull, who, it was said, was soon is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? to be moving beyond this world. A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hun- “Chiang ...” he said, a little nervously. dred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as The old seagull looked at him kindly. “Yes, my son?” Instead perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our of being enfeebled by age, the Elder had been empowered by purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth. it; he could outfly any gull in the Flock, and he had learned The same rule holds for us now, of course: we choose our next skills that the others were only gradually coming to know. world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and “Chiang, this world isn’t heaven at all, is it?” the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations The Elder smiled in the moonlight. “You are learning again, and lead weights to overcome.” Jonathan Seagull,” he said. He stretched his wings and turned to face the wind. “But “Well, what happens from here? Where are we going? Is you, Jon,” he said, “learned so much at one time that you there no such place as heaven?” didn’t have to go through a thousand lives to reach this one.” “No, Jonathan, there is no such place. Heaven is not a place, In a moment they were airborne again, practising. The and it is not a time. Heaven is being perfect.” He was silent for formation point-rolls were difficult, for through the inverted a moment. “You are a very fast flier, aren’t you?” half Jonathan had to think upside down, reversing the curve “I ... I enjoy speed,” Jonathan said, taken aback but proud of his wing, and reversing it exactly in harmony with his that the Elder had noticed. instructor’s. “You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand 17. miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Chiang spoke slowly and watched the younger gull ever so Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have carefully. “To fly as fast as thought, to anywhere that is,” he limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.” said, “you must begin by knowing that you have already Without warning, Chiang vanished and appeared at the arrived ...” water’s edge fifty feet away, all in the flicker of an instant. Then The trick, according to Chiang, was for Jonathan to stop he vanished again and stood, in the same millisecond, at seeing himself as trapped inside a limited body that had a Jonathan’s shoulder. “It’s kind of fun,” he said. forty-two-inch wingspan and performance that could be plot- Jonathan was dazzled. He forgot to ask about heaven. “How ted on a chart. The trick was to know that his true nature do you do that? What does it feel like? How far can you go?” lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once “You can go to any place and to any time that you wish to across space and time. 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. Jonathan kept at it, fiercely, day after day, from before sunrise Those who put aside travel for the sake of perfection go any- till past midnight. And for all his effort he moved not a where, instantly. Remember, Jonathan, heaven isn’t a place or feather-width from his spot. a time, because place and time are so very meaningless. “Forget about faith!” Chiang said it time and again. “You Heaven is ...” didn’t need faith to fly, you needed to understand flying. This “Can you teach me to fly like that?” Jonathan Seagull is just the same. Now try again ...” trembled to conquer another unknown. Then one day Jonathan, standing on the shore, closing his “Of course, if you wish to learn.” eyes, concentrating, all in a flash knew what Chiang had been “I wish. When can we start?” telling him. “Why, that’s true! I am a perfect, unlimited gull!” “We could start now, if you’d like.” He felt a great shock of joy. “I want to learn to fly like that,” Jonathan said, and a strange “Good!” said Chiang, and there was victory in his voice. light glowed in his eyes. “Tell me what to do.” 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. 18. “At last you’ve got the idea,” Chiang said, “but your control fun of all. You will be ready to begin to fly up and know the needs a little work ...” meaning of kindness and of love.” Jonathan was stunned. “Where are we?” A month went by, or something that felt about like a Utterly unimpressed with the strange surroundings, the month, and Jonathan learned at a tremendous rate. He always Elder brushed the question aside. “We’re on some planet, had learned quickly from ordinary experience, and now, the obviously, with a green sky and a double star for a sun.” special student of the Elder Himself, he took in new ideas like Jonathan made a scree of delight, the first sound he had a streamlined feathered computer. made since he had left Earth. “IT WORKS!” But then the day came that Chiang vanished. He had been “Well, of course it works, Jon,” said Chiang. “It always talking quietly with them all, exhorting them never to stop works, when you know what you’re doing. Now about your their learning and their practising and their striving to under- control ...” stand 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. By the time they returned, it was dark. The other gulls looked “Jonathan,” he said, and these were the last words that he at Jonathan with awe in their golden eyes, for they had seen spoke, “keep working on love.” him disappear from where he had been rooted for so long. When they could see again, Chiang was gone. He stood their congratulations for less than a minute. “I’m As the days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time the newcomer here! I’m just beginning! It is I who must learn and again of the Earth from which he had come. If he had from you!” known there just a tenth, just a hundredth, of what he knew “I wonder about that, Jon,” said Sullivan, standing near. here, how much more life would have meant! He stood on the “You have less fear of learning than any gull I’ve seen in ten sand and fell to wondering if there was a gull back there who thousand years.” The Flock fell silent, and Jonathan fidgeted in might be struggling to break out of his limits, to see the embarrassment. meaning of flight beyond a way of travel to get a breadcrumb “We can start working with time if you wish,” Chiang said, from a rowboat. Perhaps there might even have been one “till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be made Outcast for speaking his truth in the face of the Flock. ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most 19. And the more Jonathan practised his kindness lessons, and the there might be one or two gulls back on Earth who would be more he worked to know the nature of love, the more he able to learn, too. How much more would he have known by wanted to go back to Earth. For in spite of his lonely past, now if Chiang had come to him on the day that he was Jonathan Seagull was born to be an instructor, and his own Outcast! way of demonstrating love was to give something of the “Sully, I must go back,” he said at last. “Your students are truth that he had seen to a gull who asked only a chance to see doing well. They can help you bring the newcomers along.” truth for himself. Sullivan sighed, but he did not argue. “I think I’ll miss you, Sullivan, adept now at thought-speed flight and helping the Jonathan,” was all he said. others to learn, was doubtful. “Sully, for shame!” Jonathan said in reproach, “and don’t be “Jon, you were Outcast once. Why do you think that any of foolish! What are we trying to practise every day? If our the gulls in your old time would listen to you now? You know friendship depends on things like space and time, then when the proverb, and it’s true: The gull sees farthest who flies highest. we finally overcome space and time, we’ve destroyed our own Those gulls where you came from are standing on the ground, brotherhood! But overcome space, and all we have left is squawking and fighting among themselves. They’re a thousand Here. Overcome time, and all we have left is Now. And in the miles from heaven — and you say you want to show them heav- middle of Here and Now, don’t you think that we might see en from where they stand! Jon, they can’t see their own each other once or twice?” wingtips! Stay here. Help the new gulls here, the ones who are Sullivan Seagull laughed in spite of himself. “You crazy bird,” high enough to see what you have to tell them.” He was quiet he said kindly. “If anybody can show someone on the ground for a moment, and then he said, “What if Chiang had gone how to see a thousand miles, it will be Jonathan Livingston back to his old worlds? Where would you have been today?” Seagull.” He looked at the sand. “Good-bye, Jon, my friend.” The last point was the telling one, and Sullivan was right. “Good-bye, Sully. We’ll meet again.” And with that, The gull sees farthest who flies highest. Jonathan held in thought an image of the great gull-flocks on Jonathan stayed and worked with the new birds coming in, the shore of another time, and he knew with practised ease who were all very bright and quick with their lessons. But the that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom old feeling came back, and he couldn’t help but think that and flight, limited by nothing at all. 20. * * * “What’s going on? Am I mad? Am I dead? What is this?” Fletcher Lynd Seagull was still quite young, but already he Low and calm, the voice went on within his thought, demand- knew that no bird had ever been so harshly treated by any ing an answer. “Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly?” Flock, or with so much injustice. “YES, I WANT TO FLY!” “I don’t care what they say,” he thought fiercely, and his “Fletcher Lynd Seagull, do you want to fly so much that you vision blurred as he flew out toward the Far Cliffs. “There’s so will forgive the Flock, and learn, and go back to them one day much more to flying than just flapping around from place to and work to help them know?” place! A ... a ... mosquito does that! One little barrel-roll There was no lying to this magnificent skilful being, no mat- around the Elder Gull, just for fun, and I’m Outcast! Are they ter how proud or how hurt a bird was Fletcher Seagull. blind? Can’t they see? Can’t they think of the glory that it’ll be “I do,” he said softly. when we really learn to fly?” “Then, Fletch,” that bright creature said to him, and the “I don’t care what they think. I’ll show them what flying is! voice was very kind, “Let’s begin with Level Flight ...” 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. 21. PART THREE 22. JONATHAN CIRCLED SLOWLY OVER THE FAR CLIFFS, watching. This rough young Fletcher Gull was very nearly a perfect flight-student. He was strong and light and quick in the air, but far and away more important, he had a blazing drive to learn to fly. Here he came this minute, a blurred grey shape roaring out of a dive, flashing one hundred fifty miles per hour past his instructor. He pulled abruptly into another try at a sixteen- point vertical slow roll, calling the points out loud. “... eight ... nine ... ten ... see-Jonathan-I’m-running- out-of-airspeed ... eleven ... I-want-good-sharp-stops-like- yours ... twelve ... but-blast-it-I-just-can’t-make ... thirteen ... these-last-three-points ... without ... fourtee ... aaakk!” Fletcher’s whipstall at the top was all the worse for his rage and fury at failing. He fell backward, tumbled, slammed savagely into an inverted spin, and recovered at last, panting, a hundred feet below his instructor’s level. “You’re wasting your time with me, Jonathan! I’m too dumb! I’m too stupid! I try and try, but I’ll never get it!” 23. Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. “You’ll “Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip,” Jonathan certainly never get it as long as you make that pullup so hard. would say, other times, “is nothing more than your thought Fletcher, you lost forty miles an hour in the entry! You have to itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, be smooth! Firm but smooth, remember?” and you break the chains of your body, too ...” But no matter He dropped down to the level of the younger gull. “Let’s try how he said it, it sounded like pleasant fiction, and they it together now, in formation. And pay attention to that needed more to sleep. pullup. It’s a smooth, easy entry.” It was only a month later that Jonathan said the time had come to return to the Flock. “We’re not ready!” said Henry Calvin Gull. “We’re not By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students, welcome! We’re Outcast! We can’t force ourselves to go Outcasts all, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight where we’re not welcome, can we?” for the joy of flying. “We’re free to go where we wish and to be what we are,” Still, it was easier for them to practise high performance Jonathan answered, and he lifted from the sand and turned than it was to understand the reason behind it. east, toward the home grounds of the Flock. “Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlim- There was brief anguish among his students, for it is the ited idea of freedom,” Jonathan would say in the evenings Law of the Flock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law on the beach, “and precision flying is a step toward expressing had not been broken once in ten thousand years. The Law said our real nature. Everything that limits us we have to put aside. stay; Jonathan said go; and by now he was a mile across the That’s why all this high-speed practice, and lowspeed, and water. If they waited much longer, he would reach a hostile aerobatics ...” Flock alone. ... and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the “Well, we don’t have to obey the law if we’re not a part of the day’s flying. They liked the practice, because it was fast and Flock, do we?” Fletcher said, rather self-consciously. “Besides, if exciting and it fed a hunger for learning that grew with every there’s a fight, we’ll be a lot more help there than here.” lesson. But not one of them, not even Fletcher Lynd Gull, had And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight come to believe that the flight of ideas could possibly be as real of them in a double-diamond formation, wingtips almost as the flight of wind and feather. 24. overlapping. They came across the Flock’s Council Beach at a Grey-feathered backs were turned upon Jonathan from that hundred thirty-five miles per hour, Jonathan in the lead, moment onward, but he didn’t appear to notice. He held his Fletcher smoothly at his right wing, Henry Calvin struggling practice sessions directly over the Council Beach and for the first gamely at his left. Then the whole formation rolled slowly to time began pressing his students to the limit of their ability. the right, as one bird ... level ... to ... inverted ... to ... “Martin Gull!” he shouted across the sky. “You say you know level, the wind whipping over them all. low-speed flying. You know nothing till you prove it! FLY!” The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were So quiet little Martin William Seagull, startled to be caught cut off as though the formation were a giant knife, and eight under his instructor’s fire, surprised himself and became a thousand gull-eyes watched, without a single blink. One by wizard of low speeds. In the lightest breeze he could curve his one, each of the eight birds pulled sharply upward into a full feathers to lift himself without a single flap of wing from sand loop and flew all the way around to a dead-slow stand-up land- to cloud and down again. ing on the sand. Then as though this sort of thing happened Likewise Charles-Roland Gull flew the Great Mountain every day, Jonathan Seagull began his critique of the flight. Wind to twenty-four thousand feet, came down blue from the “To begin with,” he said with a wry smile, “you were all a bit cold thin air, amazed and happy, determined to go still higher late on the join-up ...” tomorrow. It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are Fletcher Seagull, who loved aerobatics like no one else, Outcast! And they have returned! And that ... that can’t conquered his sixteen-point vertical slow roll and the next day happen! Fletcher’s predictions of battle melted in the Flock’s topped it off with a triple cartwheel, his feathers flashing confusion. white sunlight to a beach from which more than one furtive “Well, O.K., they may be Outcast,” said some of the younger eye watched. gulls, “but where on earth did they learn to fly like that?” Every hour Jonathan was there at the side of each of his It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass students, demonstrating, suggesting, pressuring, guiding. He through the Flock: Ignore them. The gull who speaks to flew with them through night and cloud and storm, for the an Outcast is himself Outcast. The gull who looks upon an sport of it, while the Flock huddled miserably on the ground. Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock. 25. When the flying was done, the students relaxed on the As simply and as quickly as that, Kirk Maynard Gull spread sand, and in time they listened more closely to Jonathan. He his wings, effortlessly, and lifted into the dark night air. The had some crazy ideas that they couldn’t understand, but then Flock was roused from sleep by his cry, as loud as he could he had some good ones that they could. scream it, from five hundred feet up; “I can fly! Listen! I CAN Gradually, in the night, another circle formed around FLY!” the circle of students — a circle of curious gulls listening in the By sunrise there were nearly a thousand birds standing darkness for hours on end, not wishing to see or be seen of outside the circle of students, looking curiously at Maynard. one another, fading away before daybreak. They didn’t care whether they were seen or not, and they It was a month after the Return that the first gull of the listened, trying to understand Jonathan Seagull. Flock crossed the line and asked to learn how to fly. In his ask- He spoke of very simple things — that it is right for a gull to ing, Terrence Lowell Gull became a condemned bird, labelled fly, that freedom is the very nature of his being, that whatever Outcast; and the eighth of Jonathan’s students. stands against that freedom must be set aside, be it ritual or The next night from the Flock came Kirk Maynard Gull, superstition or limitation in any form. wobbling across the sand, dragging his left wing, to collapse at “Set aside,” came a voice from the multitude, “even if it be Jonathan’s feet. “Help me,” he said very quietly, speaking in the the Law of the Flock?” way that the dying speak. “I want to fly more than anything else “The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan in the world ...” said. “There is no other.” “Come along then,” said Jonathan. “Climb with me away “How do you expect us to fly as you fly?” came another from the ground, and we’ll begin.” voice. “You are special and gifted and divine, above other “You don’t understand. My wing. I can’t move my wing.” birds.” “Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your “Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Are they also true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way. It special and gifted and divine? No more than you are, no more is the Law of the Great Gull, the Law that Is.” than I am. The only difference, the very only one, is that they “Are you saying I can fly?” have begun to understand what they really are and have begun “I say you are free.” to practise it.” 26. His students, save Fletcher, shifted uneasily. They hadn’t Fletcher Lynd Seagull snapped hard to the left, at something realised that this was what they were doing. over two hundred miles per hour, into a cliff of solid granite. The crowd grew larger every day, coming to question, to It was, for him, as though the rock were a giant hard door idolize, to scorn. into another world. A burst of fear and shock and black as he hit, and then he was adrift in a strange strange sky, forgetting, remembering, forgetting; afraid and sad and sorry, terribly “They are saying in the Flock that if you are not the Son of the sorry. Great Gull Himself,” Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after The voice came to him as it had in the first day that he had Advanced Speed Practice, “then you are a thousand years met Jonathan Livingston Seagull. ahead of your time.” “The trick, Fletcher, is that we are trying to overcome our Jonathan sighed. The price of being misunderstood, he limitations in order, patiently. We don’t tackle flying through thought. They call you devil or they call you god. “What do rock until a little later in the programme.” you think, Fletch? Are we ahead of our time?” “Jonathan!” A long silence. “Well, this kind of flying has always been “Also known as the Son of the Great Gull,” his instructor here to be learned by anybody who wanted to discover it; said dryly. that’s got nothing to do with time. We’re ahead of the fashion, “What are you doing here? The cliff! Haven’t I ... didn’t I maybe. Ahead of the way that most gulls fly.” ... die?” “That’s something,” Jonathan said, rolling to glide inverted “Oh, Fletch, come on. Think. If you are talking to me now, for a while. “That’s not half as bad as being ahead of our time.” then obviously you didn’t die, did you? What you did manage to do was to change your level of consciousness rather abruptly. It’s your choice now. You can stay here and learn on It happened just a week later. Fletcher was demonstrating the this level — which is quite a bit higher than the one you left, by elements of high-speed flying to a class of new students. He the way — or you can go back and keep working with the had just pulled out of his dive from seven thousand feet, a long Flock. The Elders were hoping for some kind of disaster, but grey streak firing a few inches above the beach, when a young they’re startled that you obliged them so well.” bird on its first flight glided directly into his path, calling for its mother. With a tenth of a second to avoid the youngster, 27. “I want to go back to the Flock, of course. I’ve barely begun prove it for himself if he’d just spend a little time practising? with the new group!” Why should that be so hard?” “Very well, Fletcher. Remember what we were saying about Fletcher still blinked from the change of scene. “What did one’s body being nothing more than thought itself ...?” you just do? How did we get here?” “You did say you wanted to be out of the mob, didn’t you?” “Yes! But how did you ...” Fletcher shook his head and stretched his wings and opened “Like everything else, Fletcher. Practice.” his eyes at the base of the cliff, in the centre of the whole Flock assembled. There was a great clamour of squawks and screes from the crowd when first he moved. By morning the Flock had forgotten its insanity, but Fletcher “He lives! He that was dead lives!” had not. “Jonathan, remember what you said a long time ago, “Touched him with a wingtip! Brought him to life! The Son about loving the Flock enough to return to it and help it of the Great Gull!” learn?” “No! He denies it! He’s a devil! DEVIL! Come to break the “Yes.” Flock!” “I don’t understand how you manage to love a mob of birds There were four thousand gulls in the crowd, frightened at that has just tried to kill you.” what had happened, and the cry DEVIL! went through them “Oh, Fletch, you don’t love that! You don’t love hatred and like the wind of an ocean storm. Eyes glazed, beaks sharp, they evil, of course. You have to practise and see the real gull, the closed in to destroy. good in every one of them, and to help them see it in them- “Would you feel better if we left, Fletcher?” asked Jonathan. selves. That’s what I mean by love. It’s fun, when you get the “I certainly wouldn’t object too much if we did ...” knack of it.” Instantly they stood together a half-mile away, and the flash- “I remember a fierce young bird, for instance, Fletcher ing beaks of the mob closed on empty air. Lynd Seagull, his name. Just been made Outcast, ready to fight “Why is it,” Jonathan puzzled, “that the hardest thing in the the Flock to the death, getting a start on building his own world is to convince a bird that he is free, and that he can bitter hell out on the Far Cliffs. And here he is today building 28. his own heaven instead, and leading the whole Flock in that After a time, Fletcher Gull dragged himself into the sky and direction.” faced a brand-new group of students, eager for their first Fletcher turned to his instructor, and there was a moment lesson. of fright in his eye. “Me leading? What do you mean, me “To begin with,” he said heavily, “you’ve got to understand leading? You’re the instructor here. You couldn’t leave!” that a seagull is an unlimited idea of freedom, an image of the “Couldn’t I? Don’t you think that there might be other Great Gull, and your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip, is flocks, other Fletchers, that need an instructor more than this nothing more than your thought itself.” one, that’s on its way toward the light?” The young gulls looked at him quizzically. Come on, they “Me? Jon, I’m just a plain seagull, and you’re ...” thought, this doesn’t sound like a rule for a loop. “... the only Son of the Great Gull, I suppose?” Jonathan Fletcher sighed and started over. “Hm. Ah ... very well,” he sighed and looked out to sea. “You don’t need me any longer. said, and eyed them critically. “Let’s begin with Level Flight.” You need to keep finding yourself, a little more each day, that And saying that, he understood all at once that his friend had real, unlimited Fletcher Seagull. He’s your instructor. You quite honestly been no more divine than Fletcher himself. need to understand him and to practise him.” No limits, Jonathan? he thought. Well, then, the time’s not A moment later Jonathan’s body wavered in the air, shim- distant when I’m going to appear out of thin air on your mering, and began to go transparent. “Don’t let them spread beach, and show you a thing or two about flying! silly rumours about me, or make me a god. O.K., Fletch? I’m And though he tried to look properly severe for his a seagull. I like to fly, maybe ...” students, Fletcher Seagull suddenly saw them all as they “JONATHAN!” really were, just for a moment, and he more than liked, he “Poor Fletch. Don’t believe what your eyes are telling you. loved what it was he saw. No limits, Jonathan? he thought, and All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, he smiled. His race to learn had begun. find out what you already know, and you’ll see the way to fly.” The shimmering stopped. Jonathan Seagull had vanished into empty air. jonathan livingston seagull by richard bach
Posted on: Sun, 30 Jun 2013 02:17:50 +0000