The Promise of Air / The Garden of Survival

THE PROMISE OF AIR

"The Promise of the Air ran through him like a strain of glad spring music.

Man, he felt sure again, was a cosmic, not only a planetary, being. He could know the stars. The real self was of air....The Kingdom of Air is within us..."

Joseph Wimble is a vague sort of fellow, placid of temperament, indifferent to most things. His one passion is birds. So when he meets Joan, their courtship and marriage is at first full of air and fancy, and they take flight with it. But after Tom is born, and a daughter soon after, Joan comes back to Earth. But Joseph never does. His daughter, whom they also name Joan, is a creature of the air like he, and together they create their own language. Together they spread their wings and soar with the possibilities.

THE GARDEN OF SURVIVAL

"There was a garden in my heart, and some one walked with me therein..."

Richard is composing a letter to his twin brother. It begins with the story of his brief marriage to the mysterious Marion, a woman who had touched his heart, but not his soul. After Marion's sudden death, Richard is left with a feeling of incompleteness, and so joins the army and goes off to Africa. There he serves many years, forgetting for awhile his life with Marion. His return to England is both familiar, and disorienting. For within him is the seed of a new understanding, a burgeoning feeling he can barely understand. Marion's final words, so long ago now, begin to haunt him. An epiphany is at hand. It begins with a walk in the garden...