The Unwritten Number

I was a freshman in college, skinny and mostly lost when the book that would change my life was put in my hands. It was put there by a self-proclaimed anarchist named Jeff.

“This is the type of book that trades hands, finds its way to people ready for it,” he said, his mohawk pointed, his goatee less so. “I’d like you to have it.”

I put down the sweating can of Busch Light I was holding (ah, college) and looked down at a plain black cover featuring a ghostly white silhouette of a bird.

“Jonathan Livingston Seagull by Richard Bach. Huh. Thanks, man - I mean it.”

I hugged Jeff, slipped the book into my back pocket, and went back to awkwardly finding my way in a new place with new people, forging friendships that would last the rest of my life, unaware of the talisman I now carried on my person.

Many years before I found myself in that cramped dorm room, my mom, as a little girl, would stand outside her home and the heated arguments therein and hold the sky with a steady gaze, watching geese fly overhead in their customary “V” - promising herself that one day she would follow them north, and away.

Later, as a young adult, she and my dad were looking for a place to go, and he was interviewing throughout New England, including at Lake Sunapee Bank in New London, NH. The logo for the bank? A flying goose. So when I was three, my parents retreated from a strip mall encroached township in New Jersey for a small town nestled in the woods and mountains of New Hampshire.

Growing up among the rocks and trees, I had a vivid imagination and a relentless need to puzzle things out. In church (my parents were raised Catholic, and so started my sister and me on the same path), there were questions and concepts that I could not get to square. (I’ll get back to the seagull book soon, I swear, but this is important - the ground you take off from is as important as the air you fly in).

I sat on the unyielding wooden pew every Sunday, and knelt, and stood, and knelt, and sat, etc. I heard the message that God loved me (which I intuited to be true), but I also heard if I did X, Y, or Z, I would burn in a lake of fire forever. Forever. Due to the aforementioned vivid imagination, the concept of eternity in torture yawned open before me, and I couldn’t fathom the love in that.

When I learned to pray, I thought of crossing myself - “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the holy spirit,” as dialing a phone, and that once dialed, He (always “He”) would pick up and listen, and I would have the ear of the Almighty. Once done, I’d sign off by crossing myself again, and that was me hanging up. If I forgot to mention something, I needed to dial back in so God could hear me. Structure. Rules. Guilt. Fear. Intermediaries - the priest is the shepherd, and we’re all just sheep, I suppose, liable to walk off a spiritual cliff and get dashed on the spiritual rocks below if not for their guidance.

Years later, after my First Holy Communion but before my Confirmation, I would make the case to my mom that I didn’t want to do it anymore, and she, remembering her unhappy upbringing, allowed me to leave the church and take my spirituality into my own hands. My grandmother tried everything to lure me back, including an attempt at a bribe. During a visit, she gestured me toward her, pulling a slim velvet black case from the zippered back on her walker, opening it to reveal a gold crucifix on a chain.

“Do you like it?” she asked, cloying and sweet.

“It’s very nice, Grandma,” I said.

“Do you want it?”

I hesitated. “I suppose if you’re giving it away, Grandma.”

“Will you get confirmed?” Ah, there’s the rub.

I reached over and put my hand on hers, moving slow and careful, shutting the case with as little sound as possible.

“No, Grandma. But thank you for thinking of me.”

After high school, I attended St. Michael’s College in Vermont, a Catholic school (the irony is not lost on me), and that’s where I met Jeff, the mohawked anarchist who gave me Jonathan, in a space between chapters in my life, ahead of who I had been but not yet who I would be. When I sat down with the book in a secret corner of the library, up several flights, around a pillar, where students before me had scrawled names and quotes and little nothings, I sat reading it, transfixed.

Jonathan is the story of a young seagull who loves to fly. Bored with his flock’s mindless focus on food each day, he is banned for constantly pursuing his love of flying for flying’s sake, seeing what he can do. Alone, he follows his bliss, and in reading, his joy in flight became my own. At the end of his physical life, two glowing white birds come to him and usher him onto the next plane, where he begins learning anew on a journey to understanding consciousness and love. The hereafter not as a final destination but the next chapter in a story that goes ever onward and upward.

As I read, little pockets in me healed. Gaps knit closed. Light was shone in corners that had been dark. Frozen pieces thawed and began flowing again. (How long ago did they atrophy…and why hadn’t I noticed?)

From the book:

“The trick was to know that his true nature lived, as perfect as an unwritten number, everywhere at once across space and time.” Then you will begin to know the meaning of kindness and love. Overcome space, and all that is left is Here. Overcome time, and all that is left is Now.”

I asked my philosophy professor to meet me for coffee, and his whole time was spent patiently listening to me recount the book in full, punctuating my narrative with thoughtful nods and the occasional “Mmm.” How kind of him to make time and space for a mind ignited.

To this day, Jonathan is a touchstone for me, a marker of a significant chapter in my life; I’ve given it away and purchased new copies, and during certain periods of my life, perhaps the most fraught and uncertain, I keep it nearby in a jacket pocket or backpack, a ward and a reminder, the words within humming and lending themselves to my vibration, raising it higher.

That’s the power of a book, isn’t it?

It’s a collection of words gifted from one mind and heart to another, unlocking something in that quiet, sacred space between the reader and the page. It’s in that space where we fly.

And if you enjoy the thrill of flight and the joy of reading - there’s a bird I would like you to meet.