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               JONATHAN                      

               LIVINGSTON  SEAGULL

It was morning and the 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.

Seagulls, as you know, never falter, never stall. To stall in the air is for them disgrace and 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.

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 oneself 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? Why don't you eat? Son, you are 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.”

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 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 in-to a blazing dive towards the waves, and learned why seagulls don’t make blazing steep power dives. In just six seconds he was moving 70 m.p.h., 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, 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. Ten times he tried, and each time, as he passed through 70 m.p.h., 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 50 and then hold the wings still.

From 2000 feet he tried again, rolling into his dive, beak straight down, wings full out and stable from the moment he passed 50 m.p.h. It took tremendous strength, but it worked. In ten seconds he had blurred through 90 m.p.h.

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 uncontrolled disaster,and at 90 m.p.h. it hit him like dynamite. Jonathan Seagull exploded in mid-air and smashed down into a brick-hard 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 just be enough to drag him gently down to the bottom and end it all. As he sank low in the water,

a 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 fly home to the Flock and be content as I am, a poor limited seagull.

The voice faded, and Jonathan agreed. The place for a seagull at night is on shore. 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 towards 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 100 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 towards the lights above the beach.

IT WAS Dark! The hol1ow voice cracked in alarm. Seagulls never fly in the dark!

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, 100 feet in the air, Jonathan Livingstone Seagull blinked.His pain, his resolutions, vanished.

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 needis to fold most of my wings and fly on just the tips alone. Short wings!

He climbed 2000 feet above the black sea and, without a thought of failure and death, brought his forewings tightly into his body, left only the narrow swept daggers of his wing tips extended into the wind, and fell into vertical dive.

The wind was a monster roar at his head. Seventy m.p.h., 90, 120 and faster still. The wing strain, now at 140 m.p.h., wasn’t nearly as hard as it had been before at 70, and with the faintest twist of his wing tips he eased waves, a grey cannon ball under the moon.

He closed his eyes to slits against the wind and rejoiced. One hundred and forty m.p.h.! Under control! If I dive. from 5000 feet instead of 2000, I wonder how f a s t ......

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 promisesare 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 sun-up, Jonathan Gull was practising again. From 5000 feet the fishing boats were specks in the flat blue water and the Breakfast Flock was a faint cloud of dust motes, circling. 

He was alive, trembling with delight, proud that his fear was under control.

Then without ceremony he hugged in his forewings, extended his short, angled wing tips, and plunged directly towards the sea. By the time he passed 4000 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 straight down, at 214 m.p.h. He swallowed, knowing that if his wings enfolded at that speed he’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 1000 feet, wing tips 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 how to turn at this speed. Collision would be instant death. And so he shut his eyes. .

It happened that morning, then, just after sunrise, that Jonathan Livingston Seagull fired directly through the centre of the Breakfast Flock, ticking off 212 m.p.h., eyes closed, in a great roaring shriek or 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 I60 m.p.h. When he had slowed to 20 and stretched his wings again at last, the boat was a crumb on the sea, 4000 feet below.

Terminal velocity! A seagull at 214 m.p.h.! 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 8000 feet, he set himself at once to discover how to turn.

A single wing tip 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 rifle 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 pin-wheel.

When he 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 Centre!” The Elder’s words sounded in a voice of highest ceremony. Stand to Centre meant only great shame or great honour. Stand to Centre for Honour was the way the gulls’ foremost leaders were marked. Of course, he thought-the Breakfast Flock saw the Breakthrough this morning! But I want no honours. I have no wish to be leader. I want only to share what I’ve found, to show those horizons ahead for us all. He stepped forward.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull,” said the Elder. “Stand to Centre for Shame in the sight of your fellow gulls!”

It felt like being hit with a board. Jonathan’s knees went weak, his feathers sagged,l there was roaring in his ears. Centred for shame? Impossible! The Breakthrough! They can’t understand! They’re wrong! “. . . for his reckless irresponsibility,”

the solemn voice intoned, “violating the dignity and tradition of the Gull Family. . . . ”

To be centred for shame meant that he would be cast out of gull society, banished to a solitary life on the Far Cliffs. 16 . . . 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 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 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.”