Seagulls

“When you have come to the edge of all the light you have
And step into the darkness of the unknown
Believe that one of the two will happen to you
Either you'll find something solid to stand on
Or you'll be taught how to fly!” Richard Bach

I've always had a bit of a thing for seagulls. I remember lying on our front lawn when I was about 8 or 9 years old, looking up at the sky, and two seagulls curving arcs in the sky above me, and thinking "I will remember this forever"

Later, in a Lucky Bookclub Lucky dip, I got 3 books and a free poster. I don't remember the books, but the poster was of two seagulls in flight against a blue sky.

It said :

"If you love something, set it free,
if it comes back to you it's yours,
if it doesn't, it never was".

My mother looked at that poster, when she took the difficult decision to send me to boarding school. I bet she thought of it too, in the long years I lived on the other side of the world. I did come back, eventually, and today I'm having a new logo and business cards printed up.

The logo is based on a bird, hovering in flight, a kind of pop-art version in different colours. I came up with the idea intiutitively, but looking at it in detail it picks up the threads of the seagulls flying when I was 8, the bedroom poster when I was 12, and the recommendation, when I was 31 to read Jonathan Livingstone Seagull.

The story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull is a deceptively simple one, of a seagull excluded from the flock for wanting to pursue his love of flying fast and high for its own sake, and not to focus on eating and survival. Jonathan finds wisdom from the Great Gull, and learns to transcend his limitations, and to share that wisdom by teaching others to transcend theirs.

I'm looking for an inspirational quote or three for the back of the card too, and thats how I made the connection between my childhood poster, and my current path.

After all that, I probably won't use the Richard Bach quote at the top of the page, but I can attest to the truth of it.