Alvin, the seagull

Once upon a time there was a blue seagull. A distant uncle told me the story of Alvin on one of his many trips to Uruguay.

Alvin, the seagull, wasn’t actually blue. He had the abilities of a chameleon; he could blend in with the colours of his surroundings. Sure enough, it wasn’t long until everyone knew him as the blue seagull, since he would restlessly sail the sea from daybreak behind the rocky cliff until the sun landed hidden by the harbour, borrowing from the sea his indigo tones.

This uncle, very dear to me yet little did I get to know him, told me a certain time that Alvin used to live on the Island of the Seagulls, although seldom was he seen on firm land, for he belonged to the sea.

Uncle Richard also told me not to mistake Alvin with the seagulls from other stories. He told me Alvin had nothing to do with a certain Jonathan Livingston –Seagull was his surname and very famous his cause-, but they did share their chase for personal growth.

Alvin lived –or still lives- a quite ascetic life. He would fly in the mornings and he would fly at sunset, and despite what you may believe, this seagull wasn’t very fond of heights. My uncle says he once told him: “Why would I want to fly high, if I can just fly away?” That was his motto: horizontal movement above all vertical raise.

Whenever we –humans, bugs from the land- dream of having wings, we imagine ourselves soaring through the clouds and flying up in the skies, just like Jonathan Livingston did.

Alvin always said how much he loved being near the sea, feeling the breeze and that scent of freedom, the freshness of water droplets when the waves shatter into crests of greenish foam, or when the roar of the mighty ocean strikes the rocks in the shore and a salty air fills the world.

Flying low was what allowed him to know so much: he travelled in every single direction and to every cape. I was told Alvin was pretty amorous: -A seagull of seaport affairs- my uncle would say. In every port and every dock he had a female little seagull who knew his name. And so he acquired the reputation of a lover, a reputation that could never fill that portion of his existence, for the bow of some big ship took away the only seagull he ever truly loved.

Despite it all, Alvin sailed on and on; he explored every cove and knew every islet, he loved every breeze and tasted the waters of every sea. The one and only thing bigger than his curiosity was his willpower.

Everybody used to think Alvin would end up ‘big screen’: devoured by some ferocious shark in the coasts of the great continent, or with his heart ripped off by the harpoon of some old fisherman in the misty sea of some distant land. And yet it was quite unlike that.

-He just vanished into thin air-, my uncle tells me. He says Alvin realised that his journey across the seas of this world was finally coming to an end. It is said on the Island of the Seagulls that one summer Alvin announced his ultimate departure. So one day at nightfall he took off heading south. It was one of those flights he used to like so much: low and peaceful, flapping just a metre above the surface, feeling the scents of the twilight and admiring the gleaming colours of his natal river. It was one of those flights with no way back. Nobody has ever heard of Alvin again…

I like to think –I tell my uncle- that Alvin flew on and on until he began to fade away. That he flew on and on southwards until little by little and with every flap he started to merge with the landscape -in a silvery-blue journey-, with the calmness of the ones who have lived their way. I tell my uncle that I truly believe that’s the way Alvin left us, for that is the exact way I would like to leave.