A Visit to the Beat Museum

Today, on a whim, I went to the Beat Museum which is located in North Beach. I admit, I didn’t know anything about the Beat Generation. I had this stereotypical view that they were a bunch of artists who dressed all in black in the 1950s and recited depressing poetry in dimly lit smokey jazz clubs. I probably should read more of their work to get a better sense of the era. But in any case, I came away with the feeling that these artists had a lot more crazy drama in their lives than the normal person.

Which brings up these questions: Why do so many famous artists have so much drama in their lives? Is experiencing drama necessary for producing art? Are well-adjusted people doomed to never produce good art? Or is that the nature of art itself–as a window to the artist’s angst in which we the viewers are just voyeristic rubberneckers?

Time for Another Pet Carrier

Moo hates carriers. Absolutely hates them. And she’s destroyed the latest one.

In all other respects, Moo is a pretty chill cat. She’s not too picky about her food. She likes belly rubs. And aside from meal times and an inexplicable tendency to step on keyboards occasionally, she usually sits beside me quietly while I’m working on stuff. But carriers. Oh boy, those are another thing altogether. I have yet to find one that doesn’t set her off.

A New Year, A New Decade

I prefer to call my occasional posting to this blog as intermittent notes while on hiatus. Life is busy and who knows what the future will bring. I also think that resolutions will never work, but there are a few things I’d like to do more of this year:

• Post more to this blog.
• Post more consistently to my postcard blog.
• Write more regularly (instead of just binge writing during NaNoWriMo events).
• Submit stories to places more often.
• Read more books (and reduce the size of my to-be-read pile).

Will any of this actually happen? Who knows. We’ll see.