Author Archives: Joe
About Joe
Moment of Zen: Hiking
This summer been so wet and rainy that I haven’t been able to do any hiking, but maybe there is still time.
TGIF
I’m so happy it’s Friday. It wasn’t that it’s been a particularly difficult week, because it hasn’t. However, I’m looking forward to dinner with a friend tonight. Sometimes, it’s just nice to put on a nice outfit and go out. Plus, we are going to one of my favorite restaurants, Waterworks. It’s always been my opinion that Vermont doesn’t have many outstanding restaurants, but this one is nice. Waterworks is in an old textile mill overlooking the Winooski River. Not only does it have a great view but also a great atmosphere. I can’t wait.
National Black Cat Appreciation Day 🐈⬛
Nothing is quite as elegant as a black cat, especially my beautiful Isabella. However, black cats and kittens are often overlooked by people looking to adopt a cat and can be at animal shelter much longer than they should be. So why is this?
Interestingly, cats in ancient Egypt were highly revered, partly due to their ability to combat vermin such as mice. Cats of royalty were known to be dressed in golden jewelry and were allowed to eat right off their owners’ plates. The goddess of warfare was a woman with the head of a cat named Bastet.
These days, however, black cats are often seen as unlucky or mischievous, but not everyone knows why that is. In Celtic mythology, it was believed that fairies could take the form of black cats, and therefore their arrival to a home or village was seen as sign of good luck.
Unfortunately, the Pilgrims that came after them were devoutly religious and fearful of anything remotely related to the pagan beliefs of their ancestors, and it was because of this fear that black cats went from being seen as the vessels of fairies to the vessels of witches and demons. At that time it became common practice to severely punish those who kept black cats as pets, and even kill the animals themselves.
Although these days nobody really believes black cats are witches or demons in disguise anymore, they are still often seen as signs of bad luck by many people in the West.
You can celebrate National Black Cat Appreciation Day in several ways. If you are looking to adopt a cat or kitten, consider adopting a beautiful black cat or kitten. If you are allergic to cats, make a donation to a local shelter to help them feed their cats, especially those beautiful black cats that people neglect to adopt. Of course, I’ll be taking a third opinion: I will be showing some extra love to my beautiful Isabella.
Unsettling Dream
Do you ever have an unsettling dream, not necessarily a bad dream, but not a good one either, and you wake up and can’t fall back to sleep because you can’t get the dream out of your head? I woke up sometime between 2:00 am and 2:30 am, and for once it wasn’t because of Isabella. This time is was one of those unsettling dreams. As hard as I tried, I couldn’t shut my brain back off and return to sleep. I was awake for over an hour before I felt like I might be able to fall asleep again. Luckily, I did fall back to sleep, but waking up with my alarm (and Isabella) at 5:00 am was pretty difficult and I still feel really groggy. It looks like it might be a long day at work. I’d actually call in sick and go back to bed if it wasn’t that for much of today, I’ll be the only person at the museum.
So, you might be wondering what this dream was. I dreamed that I was sitting in church when the minister began to quote the Bible verses that are used to condemn gay people and then rant about the evils of homosexuality. In the dream, I stood up and began to explain how wrong he was, why he was ignorant of the Bible’s history and interpretation of translations, and that he was preaching hate and unchristian beliefs. The minister then turns to the congregation and says in a sarcastic manner, “Here we go people” in the manner of someone who is already mocking the person talking in an effort to discredit them before they begin presenting their case. That’s when I woke up, and all I could think about was all the things I’d like to say to this hateful preacher and show why he was a hypocrite who was preaching the opposite of what Christ taught.
The thoughts running through my head used to keep me up at night on a regular basis. I just wouldn’t be able to shut off my mind and fall asleep. However, I rarely wake up remembering my dreams, let alone allow an unsettling dream like last night keep me awake. I’ve had other dreams that woke me up, but they were usually more of an erotic nature. I usually have to try to take care of a very different type of “hard issues” before I can fall back to sleep.
If You Must Hide Yourself From Love
If You Must Hide Yourself From Love
By Christopher Salerno
It is important to face the rear of the train
as it leaves the republic. Not that all
departing is yearning. First love is
a factory. We sleep in a bed that had once
been a tree. Nothing is forgot.
Yet facts, over time, lose their charm,
warned a dying Plato. You have to isolate
the lies you love. Are we any less
photorealistic? I spot in someone’s Face-
book sonogram a tiny dictum
full of syllogisms. One says: all kisses come
down to a hole in the skull,
toothpaste and gin; therefore your eyes
are bull, your mouth is a goal.
About the Poem
“Love hurts, warned The Everly Brothers. Especially when we let passion trump reason. After all, as Plato suggests, there are any number of available ‘beds in nature’ to make one’s lovelife more complicated. As humans we struggle with the difference between physical, emotional, and intellectual love. Sometimes we simply need to bail out of the whole enterprise, and sometimes, after a great pain, we may need to censor it from our lives. To see sentimentality for what it is. Only then do we come back (to love) even stronger.”—Christopher Salerno
About the Poet
Christopher Salerno was born on June 13, 1975, in Somerville, New Jersey. He received an MA from East Carolina University and an MFA from Bennington College.
Salerno is the author of Sun & Urn (University of Georgia Press, 2017), winner of the Georgia Poetry Prize; ATM (Georgetown Review Press, 2014), winner of the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize; Minimum Heroic (Mississippi Review Press, 2010), winner of the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize; and Whirligig (Spuyten Duyvil, 2006).
In the judge’s citation for the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize, D. A. Powell writes, “Salerno rifles through our empty wallets to show how much we’re missing. These poems are mystical transactions of body and soul, as dark as Faust and as illuminating.”
Salerno has also received a fellowship from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. He currently serves as an editor at Saturnalia Books and teaches at William Paterson University. He lives in Caldwell, New Jersey.
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Joe
The Closet Professor 