Chapter 5 part three

Jonathan hovered slowly over the far cliff, watching carefully.This rough young Fletcher Gull is very close to being a perfect pilot.In the air, he is tenacious, light and agile.But more importantly, he had a burning desire to learn to fly. In an instant, he flew over, and saw a blurry gray shape, flipped out of a dive, and passed his mentor like lightning at a speed of one hundred and fifty miles per hour.He turned and made another attempt, this time a slow vertical roll at sixteen, counting out loud as he rolled. "...eight...nine...ten...look, Jonathan, I'm -below-air-speed...ten-...I-want-to-be-like-you-all at once ——sha—live...twelve...but,—god—ah—I—do—no—to...thirteen...the last—three—points— la... no... ah ah"

When Fletcher failed, he was restless and angry, and now he lost control when he tried to stop at the highest point, which was even worse.He tumbled headlong, slammed upside down, and finally regained his balance, panting, but a hundred feet below his mentor's level. "You're wasting time with me, Jonathan! I'm so stupid! I'm so stupid! I try and try and it never works!" Jonathan looked down at him and nodded. "There's nothing you can do when you come to a stop like that. Fletcher, you slowed down forty miles an hour the first time! You've got to be steady! Be firm, but also steady, remember?"

He descends to the level of the young gull. "Let's try it together, flying in formation. Pay attention to how you stop. Start off smooth and relaxed." By the end of the third month, Jonathan had taken in six more students, all outcasts.But they all share a curiosity to explore flying for the joy of flying. However, it is still much easier for them to practice advanced flying skills than to understand its meaning. "The fact that each of us is the idea of ​​the great seagull, an infinite idea of ​​freedom," Jonathan used to say each evening on the beach. "Precise flying is a step toward expressing our true nature. Anything that limits us We have to clear stuff. That's why we do this high-speed and low-speed practice, doing all kinds of stunts..."

…while his students were all dozing off, exhausted after a day of flying.They love the practice because it's fast, exciting, and it satisfies a desire to learn that now grows stronger with each lesson they take.But none of them, Fletcher included, believed that flying with ideas could be as real as flying with wind and feathers. "Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip," Jonathan said again, "is your thoughts themselves, only transformed into a form that your eyes can see. The shackles also broke the shackles of the body at the same time..." But no matter what he said, it sounded like a nice story, but what they needed more was sleep.

Just a month later, Jonathan said, now it's time to go back to the group. "We're not ready yet!" said Henry Calvin the Seagull. "We won't be welcome! We're all outcasts! We can't force ourselves to be where we're not welcome, can we?" "We have the freedom to go where we want and be whatever we want," Jonathan replied.After all, he took off from the beach, headed east, and flew towards the habitat of the gulls. For a while, the students were very distressed, because Gull Group's law stipulates that once they become orphans, they can never go back.For ten thousand years, this law has never been violated.The law said stay; Jonathan said go; and he was a mile above the sea by this time.If they stayed here any longer, he would have to deal with the hostile flock alone.

"Well, since we're not members of the group, we don't have to obey the group's laws; do we?" said Fletcher, looking a little embarrassed, "and besides, if there's a fight, we're better off there than here. Much more." In this way, their eight seagulls lined up in a double diamond formation, and each other's desires and losses were almost the same, and they flew eastward together that morning.They were traveling at one hundred and thirty miles an hour across the beach where the flocks met.Jonathan led, Fletcher flew steadily on his right, and Henry Calvin followed manly on his left.Then, the whole formation rolled slowly to the right, acting like a bird...flying horizontally...turning over and upside down...and flying horizontally again, the sea wind hit each of them like a whip.

The noisy and bustling daily life among the gulls was suddenly interrupted, as if the flying formation was a huge knife, and it fell on them head-on.Eight thousand eyes stared at it without blinking.Eight seagulls, one after another, jumped up steeply, flipped some buckets, circled again, and landed upright on the beach at an extremely slow speed.Then, Jonathan the Seagull began to comment on the flight, as if this happened every day. "First point," he said with a wry smile, "you all followed a little slower..." There was a lightning reaction among the gulls.Those who come are foundlings!They are back!And this... this is impossible!Fletcher's prediction of a battle is not fulfilled due to the confusion of the flock.

"Well, yes, yes, they're outcasts," said some of the young gulls, "but, hey, man, where did they learn to fly like that?" It took almost an hour for the elder's words to spread among the gulls: don't pay attention to them.Anyone who talks to an outcast will be kicked out as an outcast.To look at the foundling is to break the law of the Flock. From that moment on, the gulls turned their gray-feathered backs towards Jonathan, but he didn't seem to care.He simply lectured and coached above the meeting beach, forcing the students to display their full talents for the first time.

"Martin Seagull," he yelled from the sky, "didn't you say you could fly at low speeds, show us right away, or you're talking nonsense!" The quiet little seagull Martin William was taken aback by his mentor's order, but he really didn't expect that he turned into a genius of low-speed flying.In the wind that couldn't be weaker, he didn't spread his wings, just bent his feathers, and he was able to take off from the beach, soar into the sky, and land again. Likewise, Charles Rowland the Seagull flew into the mountain wind, reaching an altitude of twenty-four thousand feet.The air above was thin and cold, and when he landed, he was purple from the cold. He was both surprised and happy, determined to fly higher tomorrow.

Seagull Fletcher, who likes to do stunts more than anyone else, successfully completed a sixteen-point vertical slow roll. After completing the same stunt the next day, he also flipped three buckets in a row. His feathers reflected white to the beach. Sunshine; and there are more than one or two eyes that sneak on the beach. Jonathan is by his students' side at all times, demonstrating, pointing, prodding and guiding.He flew with them, through night, clouds, and storms, like a game.But at this time, the whole flock of gulls was pitifully huddled together on the ground. After the flight, the students rested on the beach; slowly, they paid more attention to what Jonathan said.He had some crazy ideas that they couldn't understand, but he also had some really good ideas that they could understand.

Gradually, at night, a circle formed around the circle of students, curious seagulls who could listen for hours on end in the dark, neither wishing to see other gulls nor Hoping to be seen by other seagulls, they all slipped away before dawn. One month after the "return home", a seagull in the flock was the first to cross the boundary line and asked to learn to fly.With such a request, Seagull Trans Rowell immediately became a criminal, regarded as an outcast, and became Jonathan's eighth student at the same time. The next night, the seagull Kirk Maynard left the flock, dragged his left wing, walked tremblingly across the beach, and fell at Jonathan's feet. "Help me I'm afraid," he said in a very soft voice, like a dying bird, "I long to fly above everything in the world..." "Come on then," said Jonathan, "take off the ground with me, and we'll fly right away." "You don't understand. Look at my wings. I can't move my wings." "Maynard the Gull, here and now, you are free to return to your true nature, to your true nature. No force can stop you. This is the law of the Great Gull, and the true law." "You mean I can fly?" "I mean you're free." Voila, how easy it is!how fast!Maynard the Seagull spreads its wings.Effortlessly, it flew into the black night sky at once.The whole flock of gulls was awakened from their dreams by his cry.He could only hear him screaming desperately from a height of five hundred feet. "I can fly! Listen! I can fly!" At dawn, nearly a thousand seagulls stood outside Jonathan's student circle, watching Maynard curiously.They no longer cared about being seen by other seagulls, they just listened intently, trying to understand what Jonathan said. He talked about very simple truths, such as: flying is the duty of seagulls, and freedom is the nature of seagulls. Anything that hinders freedom, no matter what it is, must be eliminated, whether it is ritual or superstition , or restrictions of any kind. "Clean it up," asked a voice from among the flock. Is the law of the flock no exception? " "The only real law is the law that leads to liberty," said Jonathan, "and there is no other law." "How can you expect us to fly as well as you?" asked another voice. "You are special, gifted, divine, and above all other birds." "Look at Fletcher! And Lowell! Charles Rowland! Judy Lee! Aren't they special, gifted, divine, too? No, no better than you, no better than me. The only difference, The only difference is that they have begun to realize their potential and have begun to realize it." His students, with the exception of Fletcher, shifted uneasily.They have not yet realized that this is what they are. The flock of gulls gathered was expanding day by day, some came to ask questions, some came to worship, some came to mock, and so on. They say among the gulls, you must be the Son of the Gull God," Fletcher told Jonathan one morning after high-speed training, "or you're running a thousand years ahead of time. " Jonathan sighed.he thinks.This is the price of being misunderstood.They either call you the devil or they call you God. "What do you think, Fletcher? Are we ahead of our time?" There was a long silence. "Well, there's nothing unusual about this kind of flight, and anyone can learn it if they want. It has nothing to do with time. Maybe we're a little more advanced in style. A little more advanced than most gulls fly." "It makes sense," Jonathan said, rolling on the ground and gliding backwards for a while. "It's better than running ahead of the times."