Change Can Be Good

Carolyn Fuller's house on Angela Street at the cemetery has undergone a minor cosmetic change for a major improvement in appearance.


The late artist was a curmudgeon of the highest order and
lived a reclusive life that anyone with my disposition would seek to emulate, but was cursed with an attractive home in a popular area and had to suffer the attentions of far too many tourists passing by. Yet she never did install a fence around her well known home preferring instead the bottle wall that subsequently suffered so much damage she changed it into a mirrored wall, which remains.


A new fence was installed after her death to gain some privacy though in my world a fence six feet tall would be preferable. It was a bright yellow garish thing which has been stained in some way and from being an eyesore it is now a rather nice addition to the home. How odd it is that Fuller's home has captured so much of the public imagination and interest in this town. I hope she is enjoying true retirement in whatever other world there may or may not be.


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Angela And Margaret

The crop of 20th century eccentrics who made Key West the desirable haven it is today, even as struggles to gentrify continue, has been thinning rather alarmingly of late. The businessman Frank Romano who figured out how to sell aloe and was one of the leading voices in the creation of Fantasy Fest died recentlyRomano and his partner (what a strange title that is in our homophobic world) had a head for numbers and an ability to sell, but those traits that are so frequently used as an excuse to diminish individuality and creativity were expressed in the exact opposite way to the benefit of the community at large. Carolyn Fuller also died recently as did the owner and creator of the Sign of Sanford Gallery, whose passing comes to mind when I ride Simonton Street. Fuller was not a loud voice in key West but her presence near the cemetery did not pass unnoticed.

I was walking past Fuller's former home, site of the bottle wall which became the mirror wall in an effort to keep pedestrians and vehicles out of her yard, and I got to thinking about that passage of time problem. Time passes faster the older we get because we come to understand there is nothing new under the sun and repetition is the enemy of long lived memories. If you notice the days passing in a flurry of speed it's because there is too much routine in your life. And yet how do we mere mortals escape routines in a world driven by same-ness and repetition? By being eccentric perhaps.It happens from time to time that I end up wondering what it would have been like had I found a career path in my youth and followed it straight into middle age? I watch youngsters in the police department doing just that and I fear for their breadth of experience and the precipitous flight into middle age that daily routines will bring as they settle into what is probably one of the best and most secure jobs one could find.
Such speculation is fruitless- we can't all be eccentric artists or travelers by inclination. Routines must dominate for most of us, and this Memorial Day weekend is a reminder of mortality and the annual start of the national summer season. It will invade Key West this weekend of course, when I will be working all night each night, but yesterday afternoon the city was a sleepy little hamlet with empty streets down which you could shoot the proverbial cannon. What was I doing Memorial Day last year? Or the year before...?