This beautiful biplane is a Fleet. Like the one Richard Bach piloted in his summer's barnstorms... This is preserved at the Spanish Museum on Aeronautics and Astronautic, in the Cuatro Vientos bounds near Madrid... (There's another one, in airworthy condition, in FIO collection, at Cuatro Vientos airfield)

This evening I went trough 'Illusions'... This is my third, four, fifth reading of the book... Can't remember, really...

I arrived to the moment in which Richard says to Donald, having been talking a lot before: "Well, you asked for it"... "If your happiness depends on what somebody else does, I guess you do have a problem"... To the book: " Donald jerked his head up and his eyes blazed as though I had hit him with the wrench... /.../ Then he smiled that half-second smile: " "You know what, Richard?", he said slowly, "You... are... right!"...

We humans usually live our life here with a lot of external conditions affecting it: work conditions, financial conditions, family conditions, etc., etc. Our daily degree of happiness depends a lot on all of them... This is the kind of education we've got and the kind of things society around us push up us to attend...

Remember the song 'Imagine', by John Lennon?. This is the same: imagine a world, in which your life takes place, in which you have only to take care really of yourself. This does not mean to leave others near you on their own, no... It simple means that, from time to time, you look at yourself, and try to do things that can make you really happy...

I've been wrong, I confess. I've let, until now, my happiness depend on what some other persons have done in a certain way... Never more...

I love you all.

TWRman

'Messiah'h Handbook - Reminders for an Advanced Soul'...

This small booklet, published in 2004, pretends to be 'The lost Book from Illusions'...

As I told you in my previous post, in 'Illusions', Messiah Donal Shimoda gives Richard a small book, titled 'Messiah's Handbook'. The use of the book is simple, and works: It has worked for me in the past two years...

When you have a problem, a situation you don't know well how to deal with, just choose whether you will read the left or right page of the booklet when you open it. Then open the book by any part of it you choose, an read what is written in the side of the open book you previously chose... You will read one or more sentences that will lead you to a solution to your problem. Believe, it works!...

Nice night. I love you all

TWRman

By 1977, seven years after the release of his hit 'Jonathan Livingstone Seagull', Richard Bach published a jewel, one step ahead of his previous success

It's quite evident Richard matured a lot his philosophy about who we are, where we have come from and where we are bound to... The book is a pleasure to read and makes you think a lot, if you allow it, of course, about a lot of very important things in each one lives...

As Richard himself did it normally at that era, he spent some time in summers 'barnstorming', this is, flying from small towns to small towns in his small biplane (a Fleet one), landing in natural fields close to that towns and flying people around for '3 dollars a ride of 10 minutes'...

One day he found a beautiful Travel Air 4000 landed in a hay field. His curiosity arouse, landed in the same field and met an interesting and curious person, Donald Shimoda... Richard soon found Donald was a Messiah to be, and that he had quit his 'job' in some moment...

They shared a lot of things, and someday, Donal gave Richard a small booklet: 'Messiah's Handbook - Reminders for the Advanced Soul'...

All the mystic and philosophy coming out from the book was not strange to me, for some reason I didn't catch at that moment. In fact, I discovered, bought and read the book in September 2009, 32 years after being written..., and felt immediately in tune with it...

In 2004, Richard Bach released the ' Messiah's Handbook'. Other jewel...

As always, I strong recommend to read Richard Bach's books to any person with an AVIATOR soul and with important questions in his/her mind about our presence on this beloved planet, Earth...

I love you all,

TWRman

And then came the movie... It was released in USA in October 1973, and by next year it was sown here.

Of course, I went to a theatre to watch it. Liked it, but arrived to the conclusion it was not a story to be translated into a film... To spend 2 full hour watching birds is not very delightful, I would say, though they say very interesting concepts...

But there was a gift included in the film: its soundtrack...

Neil Diamond does a great job in performing it. It's simply delicious... The main title, 'Be', is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard...

You can listen to it, with other beautiful track, 'Dear Father' in this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAMYOLiFXPQ

The IS bless you all...

"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 learnt. 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 look across the sky, across that magnificent silver land where he had learnt 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..."

Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingstone Seagull 

No comments, right?

Outcasts life is always a lonely one. But, if you wish, you can learn a lot, just being with yourself:

"... 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.. (Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingston Seagull"

So he was ready for his final step...

     You know the story: after passing one morning through the gull's flock getting their food near a fishing boat at about 220 mph (thankfully no one was hurt...), Jonathan was cast out of his gull's flock that night... He became an outcast...

     It's what others, society, do when you're different. You can be true, they may be false, but this really doesn't matter. They cast you out...

     And when we are cast out, we're 'condemned' to stay alone... You can only be with other outcasts, if your sufficiently lucky to find them....

     Anyway, usually is a good time to stop, relax, and think about life. Although the others just not think like yo do, this does not mean you surely has committed some errors. Some things yo have done without wanting to hurt anyone can be viewed different from the ones who feel hurt by you...

Jonathan was quite irresponsible flying at that speed through a boisterous flock of birds, of course... Surely I've been irresponsible for writing things that, though considered by me be true, can, and do, have hurt others...

So I feel now just like my beloved Jonathan: an outcast... Time to learn, as it was for him then...

I love you, Bug...

You know, Jonathan Livingstone is a male seagull. Jonathan, in anglosaxon countries, is a male's name. Richard Bach refer to him several times on his book as "he", or "him"... So you, ladies who can read this, don't seek "los tres piés al gato". It's as simple as this, right?

Jonathan's behaviour is the one of a young male not accepting his roll in his life... He had discovered the flight, not as a mean to get food, but by itself. The plane was he himself, and he wanted to know what nowadays is known as the "plane full flight envelop"

Richard says about him:

"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."
Richard Bach - Jonathan Livingstone Seagull

 The first edition in Spanish was released by 1972 or so. When I found out, I rushed to buy it. I got my paperback small book at La Casa del Libro, in Gran Vía Avenue, Madrid.

I began to read it just arriving home. I didn't pass page 5 or so... Translation was horrible!... The one who did it had no idea at all of what aviation is and its phrases and vocabulary... Next day I throw it in the first paper basket I found...

Trouble was at that time that, first, you cannot get the original edition in English here, and two, that my English was at that time quite 'primitive' (to say something), so I wouldn't have been able to read it...

 
               About three years later two things happened: I was able to get a copy of the original edition in English and my English had improved at least to the level of being able to enjoy the book.

And I enjoyed the book. All three parts... And still I read it from time to time. And whenever I read it, it's almost like if it were the first time I did it...

I've gifted this book to several friends. Those ones that were able to read it in English, of course...

And this makes me think of this: Are all English-speaking people that read Richard Bach books pilots? If not, though his aviation phrases and words could be perfect, maybe do not have any meaning to the reader. For example, when it's said in the book that, practising high speed dives, Jonathan's left wing stalled on the upstroke from 70 mph, all they know the meaning of this?

This has led me to the conclusion that Richard's books, though thought to everyone, are dedicated, instinctively, to AVIATION people...

And I think him for this

Por cierto, en la traducción del título del francés pusieron  "Jonathan Livingston, el Gavión"... Curioso...

Richard Bach

 I can't start this blog without mention  Richard Bach...

Richard (Oak Park, Illinois, 1936) is a PILOT . An enormous chunk of a PILOT... He was professionally involved with USAF since 1957 to 1962. In this period he flew the Republic F-84F Thunderstreak in Europe, flying missions from his Belgian base to anywhere in Europe. He wrote at that time his beautiful book, "Stranger to the Ground"... In a night flight back to his base in France from a base in England, at 35000 ft, alone with himself in the narrow cockpit of his Thunderstreak fighter, He lets his mind express itself... What a beautiful book, believe me...

I knew about him by 1971 or so. At that time I was mid-career at Madrid's ETSIA (Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Aeronaúticos). I was a regular reader of 'FLAPS', a good monthly aviation magazine here. In one magazine's issue, the first part of Jonathan Livingstone Seagull was published (JLS, 1970)... It was a translation from a French aviation magazine publishing, in French, of the original Part 1 of the story in English...


Fortunately, both translators were extremely good (English to French, French to Spanish) They were pilots or, at least, people with sound knowledge of Aviation terms and vocabulary...


From that moment, I was in love with Jonathan Livingstone Seagull...

Well, you will find here some of my latest posts in my Facebook account. They will be like an introduction to deeper stories and pictures.

See you soon

TWRman

Hello. This blog, my blog, is intended to deal only with Aviation, aeronautics and some other subjects related with it, such as meteorology or radio communications (just COMMs in the future)

Basically I will express feelings, combined with some piloting skills. There will be pictures, too

All comments are welcome, of course. Initially, the blog will not be moderated, and feel free to express your disappointment with anything, if any.

Welcome all

TWRman