Brenda Hernandez: La Petite Mort

This week I sat down with my dear friend, arts educator, and cultural worker Brenda Hernandez and reflected on her new role as the Co-Director of the Allied Media Conference, the respite she’s finding in gardening and landscaping, and the bewildering moment we find ourselves in.

“You know that time of the day when you don’t know what time it is?”

It could either be a sunrise or a sunset? You know that time of the day? It’s that time. It’s like a time of day that’s sort of beautiful but it’s weird that moment can exist in the morning or in the evening. Right before that happens it's so ephemeral and strange that for a brief moment you don’t know what time it is. 

In a way that moment in time is kind of freaky. It kind of makes me think of an orgasm in French “La petite mort” it’s like you stop breathing. It feels like little death if you didn’t know any better. But if you take a step back, you know something is going to happen. But when you’re really in it, you don’t know if something is happening after and you don’t know what’s happened before. That’s the time. 

“This time is asking us to take a deep breath and go straight into an ugly cry, throw a full-blown tantrum, maybe even break some shit and then cry and cry and cry.”

Cry ourselves to sleep so that when we wake up the next day we are free of all that we were carrying, and can look at the mess we made, like take a really good look at it and get it to it. 

You know, everyone will learn something different because we were all in our own places, in our own frames of thought, context and experiences. I am learning to slow down and pay attention. I think this time is teaching us to be empathetic and care for strangers, literally we are learning to change individual behaviors for the good of others.