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humdog

Erika Whiteway just emailed me that Carmen Hermosillo, aka humdog, died. I looked for an obit and found a post by my former FringeWare partner, Paco Nathan. "Among those who formed the core of FringeWare," he says, "Humdog becomes the first of us to go to our ancestors." Tiffany Lee Brown reports that there'll be a memorial service in Second Life tomorrow.

I met humdog in the Mondo 2000 forum that RU Sirius and I were hosting on the WELL, where I also met Tiffany and Erika... and recruited all three to become substantial voices in the FringeWare community. Carmen was a fearless passionate poet. I never saw her face.

We all have demons, and Carmen's demons and mine were set at odds in the end, something I always regretted terribly. We have finite relationships throughout our lives and we should respect and support all of them, a lesson I learned too late to fix some of my own deep connections that were broken, carelessly and without much thought, in the 90s.

I looked for a humdog poem to quote here, and found this translation she'd done, which seems appropriate:

for elisa

so that you can read them with your gray eyes,
so that you can sing them with your clear voce,
so that they would move you deeply,
i made these poems, myself.

so that they may find asylum in your heart
so that you can give them youth, and color, and heat,
three things that i can no longer give them,
i made these poems, myself.

so that you could take pleasure in my happiness,
so that you could suffer yourself with my pain,
so that you could feel the vibrancy of my life,
i made these poems, myself.

so that i could place before you
the offerings of my life, and my love,
with its spirit, broken dreams, laughter, tears,
i made these poems, myself.

-Gustavo Adolfo Becquer
-translated from the Spanish by C. Hermosillo
16 May 1997

jon posted this at 8:04 AM
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