Corianthe

By Iulia Georgeta Popescu and Manuela ?oitu

A little girl on her summer vacation at her grandparents' rides a bicycle with her friend, a cat named Philippe, to the neighboring forest, thus embarking on an unexpected adventure. On this adventure, she meets fabulous characters: Rusalia, Boygen, also called the Great Detour, DallE, none other than Salvador Dali --now transmogrified into a new existence on the planet Trafalmadore, and even Steve Howe, guitarist of the progressive rock band Yes, and also her neighbor, the dog Geppetto, who receives a mysterious resemblance to Howe. Juli, DallE, and Steve climb together into the Pleiades, on the planet of the ineffable--Corianthe (with its moon Astarhe), where they briefly learn about its forms of relief, about the Alexandrian Sea of Slightly Rosy Amethyst, about the Corianthians and their customs, about the connection between the inhabitants of the planet and children on Earth, and about picomers--the primary forms from which earthly desires are born. There, Juli makes a wish and finds out about the elephant ladder. Her adventure lasts a whole day--by chance, exactly the day of the summer solstice ...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Nov 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781982238186

Iulia Georgeta Popescu

Iulia Georgeta Popescu was born in 1973 in the city of Craiova, Romania. She is a graduate of the acting department of the "George Enescu" University of Fine Arts in Iai. Since 2010, she has been intensely active in the independent theater world, and currently she is performing in two personal shows. CORIANTHE is her very first book, written in a flash in three weeks of the summer of 2014, although her editorial debut was her second book, chronologically speaking--NOTORIOUS, published in Bucureti, Romania, in 2018.

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Copyright © 2019 Iulia Georgeta Popescu.

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The author of this book does not dispense medical advice or prescribe the use of any technique as a form of treatment for physical, emotional, or medical problems without the advice of a physician, either directly or indirectly. The intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you in your quest for emotional and spiritual well-being. In the event you use any of the information in this book for yourself, which is your constitutional right, the author and the publisher assume no responsibility for your actions.

Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The NIV and New International Version are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

Translation by Daniela S. Falco

Interior Image Credit: Manuela Șoitu

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3817-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3819-3 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-3818-6 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019917800

Balboa Press rev. date: 11/14/2019

CONTENTS

IN PLACE OF FOREWORD

FOREWORD

1

2

3

4

5

frontcover.jpg

The diary of a journey just the way it was, written on a road sheet, torn off on arrival, which is why no child could be considered absent-minded if she did not remember it.

Iulia Georgeta Popescu

Motto:

Let us treat the men and women well; treat them as if they were real: perhaps they are.

R. W. Emerson ("Experience," 1844)

"Life is not just pain, but it is the chance to dream, to love, to forgive, to

heal all the blood of the nation.

Sing the silence and do not rush ...

Do not forget to let your heart sing the song that only you and good God can hear. Paradise is within you."

(Few Tears, Plenty of Joy)

Hrisostom Filipescu

IN PLACE OF FOREWORD

This story willed itself written! One day, before the end of June, but not earlier than St. John’s Day, let’s say about the time of the summer solstice, it appeared out of thin air and asked the author of this book to keep an eye on it. Therefore, she, the author, has no idea how she wrote it, because she is not a writer. If you desire to find out what and how, ask a professional writer. The fact is that she has had tons of fun while laboriously putting down without complaining everything that the story dictated her. She wrote on it for about a month and a while, while she ate a lot of ice-cream and a few cakes (but cakes only on the weekend!), she walked through parks and gardens to listen to it better, she saw how daylight changes (and it changes like this: at the end of June and almost all of July, outside daylight is white; to the last hours of July, approaching August, the light begins to take on a yellowish-golden hue; she saw this when she was filtering everything through her eyelashes, through her half-open eyes), late at night she waited for the stars to tame themselves, and she used a whole tube of toothpaste.

The story also told her: You have no idea what hidden pleasure lies in every second which you don’t open just because you rush to the next one. Take your steps without worries, for each second takes care of itself.

Ultimately, she thanks the story for having told itself.

The author thanks her parents now. She dedicates them this book.

She thanks all people she has met and known in this life—many of them art creators: painters, musicians, literature writers, visionaries—because they have helped her write this book, step by step; she dedicates it to them.

She is grateful that among them there is a magic one; there is always a magic one. He. When you meet him, praise him. He doesn’t even know he is magic. He makes her heart glad, and only now has she found the right words to tell him. She dedicates her book to him.

FOREWORD

Which, for logic’s sake, we shall call In Place of Foreword

When this happened to me, I promised myself I would tell the story.

One evening, I was walking home. It was May, and the linden trees were already redolent. In the middle of the street, there was a cat. I want to be clear: at first, I did not know it was a cat, or an animal, or an electric creature, or anything else, maybe because I’ve neither seen nor heard anything like this one in my life: something that screamed in a hysterical episode, screamed just like only a cat can! So, it was a cat ... She rolled around, she bit her tail with her teeth—this cat just ran around herself. I tried to understand, though it took me time. She had rendered me silent, now she was deafening me…

I remembered a car that had driven by ten seconds before, some dogs that were barking… I understood that they had scared the cat, that she had run under the car’s tires, and the car had hurt her, maybe its head or its spine… This little crazed cat was twisting in its electrified fur, as she had lost balance. I got close to her, but no way she’d let me touch her! I slightly, easily, moved her out of the way, until a car stopped on the side of the road.

When I bent down again to look at her, there she was, constant, smooth, and gracefully licking her little paws…

It was as if she had instantly switched places with another cat, as if I was witnessing a crazy magic show! It was as if she had gone successively, with a supersonic speed, through all the destroyed lives of her cat lives, and she had stopped at the last one, the safe one that would have been left whole after the catastrophe.

I believe I have seen a cat-lesson, one about the vehemence with which you refuse what you don’t want or like, about ways to exorcise that, and to do just what you want; and instead of dying, about how to choose to live: simply, that is, from your entire being, in one swift movement.

Lastly, it was a lesson about the strangest and most impressive animals in the world.

1

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When he woke up in the morning, Geppetto did not really know what to make of it. The dog life which he had received this time was a little foggy. All night he had fought the flies; he was hot—it was summer, and he understood that they,