CARMEN HERMOSILLO: HUMDOG IN MEMORIAM

Carmen Hermosillo, a contributor to 2GQ under the pseudonym "humdog," died last weekend of a heart attack at her home in California. Pighed reports that he spoke to her the night before and that she seemed OK but stressed.

A memorial service will be held online in Second Life on Saturday, August 16, 6 pm Pacific.

humdog was a kick-ass presence in the hyper-male-dominated early 1990s online world, a writer of searing poetry and hilarious invective alike. She contributed to the 2GQ print journal "Why the Fuck Should Anyone Care About Poetry?" article and to the 1993 "Chicks in Cyberspace" issue of Fringe Ware Review that Erika Whiteway (outrider) and I co-edited. I'm glad I got to work with her even if just a little bit, and to spend time trying to figure out the damned universe together.

Comments

[craig1st]

beautiful, pighed. Thanks.

Carmen was a good friend to me on the Well, talked me through some hard times, always gracious.

Just found out about this yesterday. Still numb.

[mark meadows aka pighed]

a message about humdog sent to me by pighed & posted here with his permission:

Status:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

she was an angel with a pen warmed in hell. she delivered keen
criticisms and warm compliments, and always spoke her personal and
far-sighted truth. that truth was based on her deep love for people,
and a fierce form of fidelity. a love and a fidelity that, i fear, may
have been her undoing.

Love is my sin and thy dear virtue hate,
Hate of my sin, grounded on sinful loving:
O, but with mine compare thou thine own state,
And thou shalt find it merits not reproving;
Or, if it do, not from those lips of thine,
That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lovest those
Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee:
Root pity in thy heart, that when it grows
Thy pity may deserve to pitied be.
If thou dost seek to have what thou dost hide,
By self-example mayst thou be denied!

- William Shakespeare. Sonnet CXLII

i, also, met carmen in 1993, and also on The WELL, and we've traveled
far together. but she was always waiting for me to catch up.

patiently, she waited for all of us. she was a classicist at heart; a
concert pianist, a student of the garden, a devout christian, a delicate
cook, and a lover of literature. she was born into a family of cuban
aristocracy and saw war at an early age. she offered classical
hospitality. i enjoyed, perhaps, a hundred meals with her - pot roast
and potatoes and a glass of red wine were always waiting for my arrival,
usually with a crumb cake to follow.. what a fine cook and a finer
friend! her RL houses or apartments were full of fine art, soft doilies,
and hard philosophy. she collected paintings (i'm honored to say that
some of my own were in that collection), she collected music, written
and recorded. she played piano, and actively studied, and actively
performed in public. but despite roots buried in a classic past her
broad-winged imagination and keen eyesight propelled her past us all.
she lived in future worlds. her classic sensibilities allowed her to
view the internet and its emotional machineries as a meteorologist views
an approaching storm. and there she waited, and watched.

and from that high hill, cool telescope in one hand, hot pen in the
other, classicist and modernist, she warned us of what she saw, and
often. she warned us of a system that, as noted above, commodifies us.
she warned us of the emotional engagements it presents. she warned us of
the semiotics of simplest messaging. she saw the internet in its true,
skeletal, and architectural forms. she was a guide for myself and others
and i know that her vision changed the lives of many near her (my own
life, certainly). her vision was that good. and many people were so
angered by that. she fought often, it is known.

then her heart broke, and she died and now we'll hold funerals and moan,
as we must.

but what crap! what crap to moan about no more crumb cake in california
afternoons! ...she is right next to us, still. let us remember that
this is a woman that slipped her false bonds.

carmen saw so far ahead that, like the speed of light, she may continue
to wait for us in the future. she wrote no small amount and i hope that
this work can be assembled, collected, collated and reviewed. it is not
that carmen deserves this, but instead that her eyesight deserves it.
in a decade people will begin to understand her value. in a decade
people will catch up. but perhaps the vacuum of her death can assemble,
by its wind, all of the papers and scraps of her writings and at the
same time propel us forward a bit, too.

like many of the great philosophers of history i fear that she will be
forgotten, that her work will be bulldozed by the coming decades, and
that she will simply fade. but despite that fear i'm glad to have known
her. one of my closest friends in real life, her passing is of course
painful, but it leaves me with a single concern;

---> few of us paid close enough attention.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux)

[Raven Moonlight]

It sorrows all of us who have had the opportunity to know her in any or all of her online persona's. Myself I meet her in Secondlife, and she came to be known as my sister there and I love and miss her as such Monte I'll miss you and visit you with the trees. Anyone wishing to can contact me in SL through the name of Rraven Moonlight.

[JM]

bummer. i am glad I got to meet hummy in meatspace a few years ago when she came to one of my book readings in la. we talked for a long time at a coffee house afterwards. she was as dazzling a conversationalist in person as on-line. i have typed this in all lower case, in memory of her. fare thee well.

[tiffany lee brown]

hi ken -- it is sad, and totally out of nowhere. humdog, humdog, humdog.

[RU Sirius]

Ow! I hadn't heard from Carmen in years. This is real sad...

RU