Story of a Gull Adrian Dragos Condurache “Salut! Demeure chaste et pure…” (Faust, Charles Gounod) Prologue. I feel both guilty and at peace with all the less than perfect things in my life. And I am extremely tempted to write about my first love. I think all our personal subjectivities are needed, in order to increase a universal objectivity – or maybe a supreme kind of subjectivity…         Sometimes I feel lost, sometimes I feel like I was flying. Sometimes I want to lay down and die – and sometimes I just want to fall in love.         Come with me!

The story of a lonely gull.
Sunset. A reddish sky. Clouds painted in the most incredible colours. A greenish sea. The sand is still warm. The rocks look lonely and careless. The waves are running to each other in a laughter.
        I can only hear the sound of the sea; and the silence. Sometimes life can be that beautiful.
        Can you hear? A gull is screaming, and it’s scream opens a new sky. It is alone. Once upon a time, one could see two of them, flying together. Two pairs of wings beating in the same time.
        It was love. Don’t ever try to define love – by thus limiting it – or you will lose the belief that it really existed. One’s deep expectancies find the fulfilment in the other: this is how love comes to being.
        The gull was lonely and sad, waiting for someone to appear. Someone to whom it could give its heart. And they started showing up. One by one… they were coming, but the gull’s flight was as lonely as ever. Deep in its soul, something was broken every time. First it understood how special and how difficult to find total, overwhelming love was. Then he realized that its flight was made possible only by the existence of love. Therefore, it continued to hope.
        Finally, the other one appeared. Lightly and quietly, without claiming that it was the one. Nights of love, of crazy passion, of flying side by side in the bright sky. They forgot about people around them, they forgot about themselves. The gull was hopelessly in love. Then departures followed, and more and more intense encounters after them. Whenever they were making love, they were creating the illusion of the sea meeting the sky, at the horizon.
        Although it was the first time that it had such feelings, the gull understood that even love had its rules. Happiness is not without an end. Love is never simple. The feelings of those involved are too subjective to be analized. That is why the gull still finds it difficult to think about love – or to talk about it. The only thing it can be certain of is that it lived a wonderful story. It was its first love – by no means the last one.
        As soon the first love changes or fades away (and it usually does), the perspective of a new love is gloomy. However, time takes all decisions for us. The gull learnt to be friends with time – although it hates its faces.
        Here it is, tired, landing on a rock, unfolding its wings and raising a long scream. Only a few can understand this scream. It is a scream of love, of strength, of despair, of decision, of incertitude, of passion and hope. For those who have really loved once, the gull’s scream translates:
        Salut! Demeure chaste et pure…

Epilogue. Although purity is delicate subject nowadays, I appealed to the words of old Faust, because they express best the anxiety, the enthusiasm and the expectancies one has from his/her future loved one. They also talk about trusting people, about trusting the one you will maybe fall in love with once, twice, or God help us, a dozen times.         I believe in saluting all the new people and the new things in my life. I believe that without love, the world would be a miserable place. That is why I let the gull to find my words, in its flight. It knows better than me what it is like to live and to love despite a hostile reality.         This was the story of the gull’s first love and of my understanding that love is possible…