JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Ancient cat goddess statue discovered in Egypt

Koosi considers herself the household goddess. Here she is surveying her territory. If she notices you’ve been staring at her too long, she will come over and slap you in the face. I don’t mean scratch, I mean slap. No claws.

In high school I listened to the radio constantly. I was more interested in pop music than I was in my lessons. In the 80s there were a couple of jazz stations and the classical music station was on all day, but the station I was glued to was the old 99.5RT. Its DJs sounded good, did not affect those fake American accents that now turn FM radio-listening into sonic torture (like attacking the eardrums with a dull cheese grater), and somehow resisted the urge to talk about themselves.

I stopped listening to the radio around 1997. That was the year I got an Internet connection; the two events may be related. Also I didn’t like the music and I especially didn’t enjoy being screeched at by fake American accents.

Every time I take a taxi I ask the driver to turn down the radio. This way I can tune out the unfunny jokes, puns, double-entendres and recycled pop strangled in the singer’s larynx (“Seees alwaaaysss a wooomannn to meeee”). If I need more sonic privacy I listen to my iPod. Lately I’ve been downloading a lot of podcasts: A History of the World in 100 Objects, readings of stories by Chekhov, philosophy lectures (One of my favorite things about the net is that I can get an MIT education for free), and the New Yorker fiction podcasts. I listen to them when I’m dining solo in restaurants, walking around the mall, doing laundry, doing groceries, or grooming the cats—activities that can be done on auto-pilot, because one must pay attention. (Don’t listen while crossing the street. I mean it.) Hearing the words right in your ears makes a favorite story sound more intimate even if you’ve read it dozens of times.

The New Yorker fiction podcasts feature well-known writers reading stories they chose from the magazine’s archive, then discussing them with the fiction editor. Three of my all-time favorite stories are in the selection: T. Coraghessan Boyle reads A Bullet In The Brain by Tobias Wolff, Thomas McGuane reads Last Night by James Salter, and Hilton Als covers Children Are Bored On Sunday by Jean Stafford (I have to thank Mrs. Helen Ladera at Pisay for putting Stafford on the reading list).

Today I listened to stories by Mavis Gallant, Harold Brodkey, Isaac Babel, and John Cheever read by Antonya Nelson, Jeffrey Eugenides, George Saunders, and Richard Ford respectively. The Cheever is a short, devastating piece called Reunion that I read more than 20 years ago when the fat red book came out; I remember wincing as I read it, and today I was wincing so hard the waiter must’ve thought I had indigestion.

Remember, take off the earbuds when crossing the street. Or using the ATM, you might forget your money. (This happened to me last month because I was distracted. By the time I remembered the cash the dispenser had shut, and it took 15 working days to get my money back.)