Leaving the Flock

​BLOG 2: RON’S NEW BOOK FIRST DRAFT
 
Richard Bach told me that a voice came to him from over his shoulder that strange and wonderful day as he walked along a lonely beach. There was no one else on that beach that day, of that he was sure, but there was a voice. Without warning, while quite alone, he heard it, and Jonathan’s wondrous story began to unfold within his mind, much as we would watch a movie screen.

If you are familiar with his tale, you will remember that Jonathan Livingston Seagull was called to answer to the council of wise old gulls for crimes that he had committed against gullkind. What were his crimes? Going beyond where normal gulls were supposed to go; experiencing a world that was open to all gulls, yet a world denied by the flock as being real.

There, called to council for what he thought was the most wondrous discovery ever made for all of his kind, he was aghast to hear the proclamation that he was to be banished from his fellow gulls of the flock forever. And, why was he banished? Because he had been flying where no gull had gone before, nor should be allowed to go.

There, standing before the Council of Gulls, he was culled from his family of gulls for trying to tell others that these things that he did, they could do also—and more—if they would but learn from him, and try.
A decade after I read these words, I too was to be culled from the council of my peers for telling the story you are about to read, of a place I went, and returned to tell of what I saw.
This strange and wonderful telling by Richard Bach, of a life beyond that which others called “normal” originally ended at this point in the story, where Jonathan was banished by the elders from the flock. There were no more visions within his mind. The voice within him fell silent. Richard couldn’t finish the story, because in truth, it wasn’t his story at all, so the journey with Jonathan Livingston Seagull had to wait.

As yet there were no shinning gulls that taught the mysteries, there was no world beyond, in fact, there was no ending at all. The voice that Richard heard no longer whispered the words within his consciousness, and the movie he saw on his inner screen had faded to black.
The story ended without ever being completed, leaving Bach mystified as to why he would be given but half a book, half a story to tell.
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Thus, with a need to make a living, he stopped the struggle to complete the story (for no effort of his own will would bring the conclusion any closer), and laid the manuscript on a shelf for the next eight years. It was not his story, you see, it was a gift from beyond his normal senses, and try as he may, he couldn’t force an ending that hadn’t yet been granted.