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 sixteenpoint vertical slow roll, calling the points out loud.
“... eight ... nine ... ten ... see-Jonathan-I’m-runningout-of-airspeed ... eleven ... I-want-good-sharp-stops-likeyours ... 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!”
Jonathan Seagull looked down at him and nodded. “You’ll
certainly never get it as long as you make that pullup so hard.
Fletcher, you lost forty miles an hour in the entry! You have to
be smooth! Firm but smooth, remember?”
He dropped down to the level of the younger gull. “Let’s try
it together now, in formation. And pay attention to that
pullup. It’s a smooth, easy entry.”
By the end of three months Jonathan had six other students,
Outcasts all, yet curious about this strange new idea of flight
for the joy of flying.
Still, it was easier for them to practise high performance
than it was to understand the reason behind it.
“Each of us is in truth an idea of the Great Gull, an unlimited idea of freedom,” Jonathan would say in the evenings
on the beach, “and precision flying is a step toward expressing
our real nature. Everything that limits us we have to put aside.
That’s why all this high-speed practice, and lowspeed, and
aerobatics ...”
... and his students would be asleep, exhausted from the
day’s flying. They liked the practice, because it was fast and
exciting and it fed a hunger for learning that grew with every
lesson. But not one of them, not even Fletcher Lynd Gull, had
come to believe that the flight of ideas could possibly be as real
as the flight of wind and feather
“Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip,” Jonathan
would say, other times, “is nothing more than your thought
itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought,
and you break the chains of your body, too ...” But no matter
how he said it, it sounded like pleasant fiction, and they
needed more to sleep.
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
welcome! We’re Outcast! We can’t force ourselves to go
where we’re not welcome, can we?”
“We’re free to go where we wish and to be what we are,”
Jonathan answered, and he lifted from the sand and turned
east, toward the home grounds of the Flock.
There was brief anguish among his students, for it is the
Law of the Flock that an Outcast never returns, and the Law
had not been broken once in ten thousand years. The Law said
stay; Jonathan said go; and by now he was a mile across the
water. If they waited much longer, he would reach a hostile
Flock alone.
“Well, we don’t have to obey the law if we’re not a part of the
Flock, do we?” Fletcher said, rather self-consciously. “Besides, if
there’s a fight, we’ll be a lot more help there than here.”
And so they flew in from the west that morning, eight
of them in a double-diamond formation, wingtips almost
overlapping. They came across the Flock’s Council Beach at a
hundred thirty-five miles per hour, Jonathan in the lead,
Fletcher smoothly at his right wing, Henry Calvin struggling
gamely at his left. Then the whole formation rolled slowly to
the right, as one bird ... level ... to ... inverted ... to ...
level, the wind whipping over them all.
The squawks and grockles of everyday life in the Flock were
cut off as though the formation were a giant knife, and eight
thousand gull-eyes watched, without a single blink. One by
one, each of the eight birds pulled sharply upward into a full
loop and flew all the way around to a dead-slow stand-up landing on the sand. Then as though this sort of thing happened
every day, Jonathan Seagull began his critique of the flight.
“To begin with,” he said with a wry smile, “you were all a bit
late on the join-up ...”
It went like lightning through the Flock. Those birds are
Outcast! And they have returned! And that ... that can’t
happen! Fletcher’s predictions of battle melted in the Flock’s
confusion.
“Well, O.K., they may be Outcast,” said some of the younger
gulls, “but where on earth did they learn to fly like that?”
It took almost an hour for the Word of the Elder to pass
through the Flock: Ignore them. The gull who speaks to
an Outcast is himself Outcast. The gull who looks upon an
Outcast breaks the Law of the Flock
Part 5 Johnathan Livingstone Seagull
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 skilful 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 ..
Johnathan Livingstone Seagull...Part 4
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 practising 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 practised 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 practise 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 practised ease
that he was not bone and feather but a perfect idea of freedom
and flight, limited by nothing at all.
Johnathan Livingstone Seagull...Part 3
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 just 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,
t “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 ...win yellow suns turning overhead.
Little Prince Chapter 4
On making his discovery, the astronomer had presented it to the International Astronomical Congress, in a great demonstration. But he was in Turkish costume, and so nobody would believe what he said.
Grown-ups are like that . . .
Fortunately, however, for the reputation of Asteroid B-612, a Turkish dictator made a law that his subjects, under pain of death, should change to European costume. So in 1920 the astronomer gave his demonstration all over again, dressed with impressive style and elegance. And this time everybody accepted his report.
If I have told you these details about the asteroid, and made a note of its number for you, it is on account of the grown-ups and their ways. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, "What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?" Instead, they demand: "How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?" Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.
If you were to say to the grown-ups: "I saw a beautiful house made of rosy brick, with geraniums in the windows and doves on the roof," they would not be able to get any idea of that house at all. You would have to say to them: "I saw a house that cost $20,000." Then they would exclaim: "Oh, what a pretty house that is!"
Just so, you might say to them: "The proof that the little prince existed is that he was charming, that he laughed, and that he was looking for a sheep. If anybody wants a sheep, that is a proof that he exists." And what good would it do to tell them that? They would shrug their shoulders, and treat you like a child. But if you said to them: "The planet he came from is Asteroid B-612," then they would be convinced, and leave you in peace from their questions.
They are like that. One must not hold it against them. Children should always show great forbearance toward grown-up people.
But certainly, for us who understand life, figures are a matter of indifference. I should have liked to begin this story in the fashion of the fairy-tales. I should have like to say: "Once upon a time there was a little prince who lived on a planet that was scarcely any bigger than himself, and who had need of a sheep . . ."
To those who understand life, that would have given a much greater air of truth to my story.
For I do not want any one to read my book carelessly. I have suffered too much grief in setting down these memories. Six years have already passed since my friend went away from me, with his sheep. If I try to describe him here, it is to make sure that I shall not forget him. To forget a friend is sad. Not every one has had a friend. And if I forget him, I may become like the grown-ups who are no longer interested in anything but figures . . .
It is for that purpose, again, that I have bought a box of paints and some pencils. It is hard to take up drawing again at my age, when I have never made any pictures except those of the boa constrictor from the outside and the boa constrictor from the inside, since I was six. I shall certainly try to make my portraits as true to life as possible. But I am not at all sure of success. One drawing goes along all right, and another has no resemblance to its subject. I make some errors, too, in the little prince's height: in one place he is too tall and in another too short. And I feel some doubts about the color of his costume. So I fumble along as best I can, now good, now bad, and I hope generally fair-to-middling.
In certain more important details I shall make mistakes, also. But that is something that will not be my fault. My friend never explained anything to me. He thought, perhaps, that I was like himself. But I, alas, do not know how to see sheep through the walls of boxes. Perhaps I am a little like the grown-ups. I have had to grow old.
Little Prince...Chapter 3
It took me a long time to learn where he came from. The little prince, who asked me so many questions, never seemed to hear the ones I asked him. It was from words dropped by chance that, little by little, everything was revealed to me.
The first time he saw my airplane, for instance (I shall not draw my airplane; that would be much too complicated for me), he asked me:
"What is that object?"
"That is not an object. It flies. It is an airplane. It is my airplane."
And I was proud to have him learn that I could fly.
He cried out, then:
"What! You dropped down from the sky?"
"Yes," I answered, modestly.
"Oh! That is funny!"
And the little prince broke into a lovely peal of laughter, which irritated me very much. I like my misfortunes to be taken seriously.
Then he added:
"So you, too, come from the sky! Which is your planet?"
At that moment I caught a gleam of light in the impenetrable mystery of his presence; and I demanded, abruptly:
"Do you come from another planet?"
But he did not reply. He tossed his head gently, without taking his eyes from my plane:
"It is true that on that you can't have come from very far away . . ."
And he sank into a reverie, which lasted a long time. Then, taking my sheep out of his pocket, he buried himself in the contemplation of his treasure.
You can imagine how my curiosity was aroused by this half-confidence about the "other planets." I made a great effort, therefore, to find out more on this subject.
"My little man, where do you come from? What is this 'where I live,' of which you speak? Where do you want to take your sheep?"
After a reflective silence he answered:
"The thing that is so good about the box you have given me is that at night he can use it as his house."
"That is so. And if you are good I will give you a string, too, so that you can tie him during the day, and a post to tie him to."
But the little prince seemed shocked by this offer:
"Tie him! What a queer idea!"
"But if you don't tie him," I said, "he will wander off somewhere, and get lost."
My friend broke into another peal of laughter:
"But where do you think he would go?"
"Anywhere. Straight ahead of him."
Then the little prince said, earnestly:
"That doesn't matter. Where I live, everything is so small!"
And, with perhaps a hint of sadness, he added:
"Straight ahead of him, nobody can go very far . . ."
Little Prince Chapter 2
So I lived my life alone, without anyone that I could really talk to, until I had an accident with my plane in the Desert of Sahara, six years ago. Something was broken in my engine. And as I had with me neither a mechanic nor any passengers, I set myself to attempt the difficult repairs all alone. It was a question of life or death for me: I had scarcely enough drinking water to last a week.
The first night, then, I went to sleep on the sand, a thousand miles from any human habitation. I was more isolated than a shipwrecked sailor on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Thus you can imagine my amazement, at sunrise, when I was awakened by an odd little voice. It said:
"If you please--draw me a sheep!"
"What!"
"Draw me a sheep!"
I jumped to my feet, completely thunderstruck. I blinked my eyes hard. I looked carefully all around me. And I saw a most extraordinary small person, who stood there examining me with great seriousness. Here you may see the best portrait that, later, I was able to make of him. But my drawing is certainly very much less charming than its model.
That, however, is not my fault. The grown-ups discouraged me in my painter's career when I was six years old, and I never learned to draw anything, except boas from the outside and boas from the inside.
Now I stared at this sudden apparition with my eyes fairly starting out of my head in astonishment. Remember, I had crashed in the desert a thousand miles from any inhabited region. And yet my little man seemed neither to be straying uncertainly among the sands, nor to be fainting from fatigue or hunger or thirst or fear. Nothing about him gave any suggestion of a child lost in the middle of the desert, a thousand miles from any human habitation. When at last I was able to speak, I said to him:
"But--what are you doing here?"
And in answer he repeated, very slowly, as if he were speaking of a matter of great consequence:
"If you please--draw me a sheep . . ."
When a mystery is too overpowering, one dare not disobey. Absurd as it might seem to me, a thousand miles from any human habitation and in danger of death, I took out of my pocket a sheet of paper and my fountain-pen. But then I remembered how my studies had been concentrated on geography, history, arithmetic and grammar, and I told the little chap (a little crossly, too) that I did not know how to draw. He answered me:
"That doesn't matter. Draw me a sheep . . ."
But I had never drawn a sheep. So I drew for him one of the two pictures I had drawn so often. It was that of the boa constrictor from the outside. And I was astounded to hear the little fellow greet it with,
"No, no, no! I do not want an elephant inside a boa constrictor. A boa constrictor is a very dangerous creature, and an elephant is very cumbersome. Where I live, everything is very small. What I need is a sheep. Draw me a sheep."
So then I made a drawing.
He looked at it carefully, then he said:
"No. This sheep is already very sickly. Make me another."
So I made another drawing.
My friend smiled gently and indulgently.
"You see yourself," he said, "that this is not a sheep. This is a ram. It has horns."
So then I did my drawing over once more.
But it was rejected too, just like the others.
"This one is too old. I want a sheep that will live a long time."
By this time my patience was exhausted, because I was in a hurry to start taking my engine apart. So I tossed off this drawing.
And I threw out an explanation with it.
"This is only his box. The sheep you asked for is inside."
I was very surprised to see a light break over the face of my young judge:
"That is exactly the way I wanted it! Do you think that this sheep will have to have a great deal of grass?"
"Why?"
"Because where I live everything is very small . . ."
"There will surely be enough grass for him," I said. "It is a very small sheep that I have given you."
He bent his head over the drawing.
"Not so small that--Look! He has gone to sleep . . ."
And that is how I made the acquaintance of the little prince.
The Little Prince Chapter 1
Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book, called True Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest. It was a picture of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. Here is a copy of the drawing.
In the book it said: "Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it. After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the six months that they need for digestion."
I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle. And after some work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing. My Drawing Number One. It looked something like this:
I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them.
But they answered: "Frighten? Why should any one be frightened by a hat?"
My drawing was not a picture of a hat. It was a picture of a boa constrictor digesting an elephant. But since the grown-ups were not able to understand it, I made another drawing: I drew the inside of a boa constrictor, so that the grown-ups could see it clearly. They always need to have things explained. My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
The grown-ups' response, this time, was to advise me to lay aside my drawings of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic, and grammar. That is why, at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a painter. I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and my Drawing Number Two. Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them.
So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes. I have flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has been very useful to me. At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona. If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.
In the course of this life I have had a great many encounters with a great many people who have been concerned with matters of consequence. I have lived a great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand. And that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
"That is a hat."
Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull Part 2
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 limitto 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 updraughts 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 big day 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. Standing 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 practising 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, forgetting 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 got 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, practising. The
formation point-rolls 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 practising
outside loops.
Jonathan Livingston Seagull...1.7
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 this
morning; they saw the Breakthrough! 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 out 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. His knees went weak, his
feathers sagged, there was a roaring in his ears. Centred 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 centred 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
solitude, 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. Helearned 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 seafogs 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 long 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
English Prose and Poetry
Welcome to a smorgasbord of beautiful English Readings for ESL Students and listeners.
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Classical Poetry and Prose
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