La Petite Mort, or “A Little Death” is the moment of heightened consciousness at the cusp of ecstasy. It is the shutdown we experience in the proximity of something overbearing. According to literary critic Roland Barthes, this feeling is the objective of all literature. A little death is also when something dies in you. I chose ‘la petite mort’ as my original pseudonym because it contains both defining polarities that stretch the canvas of my life. As well as yours. Death and Sex… and everything that somehow inevitably passes in between.
“The thing that matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”
Charles Bukowski
Dangerous Writing is a minimalist approach to writing. The emphasis is on writing “dangerously”— that is, writing what personally scares the author in order to explore and express those fears. I started writing because I had to. Out of desperation. As Bukowski put it, “Either you put it on paper or take it off the bridge.” I begun to take my writing seriously after I realized in psychotherapy sessions, that all of my therapists over time became much more interested in my stories, than in fixing me. That was when it hit me that maybe I didn´t need a fix. I needed to address the story I was living. When recounting my stories to friends, associates and anybody who would listen, I realized that my life has become what novelist Steven Pressfield calls “the shadow symphony”, the substitute for the art one should be making. There was suspense in it; guilt, redemption a set up for perfect drama. It was complete with colourful characters, with desires and vices. I knew then what I had to was turn it into a real work of art, since it has already become shadow artform – folklore, perhaps, or entertainment.
Is this a work of fiction? When I tried to pass these stories as a memoir I quickly realized I made a mistake. I realized that, because nobody believed me. That was a bit startling. It was also liberating – it meant I no longer had to worry whatever the hell I wrote about. So I treat them now as a work of fiction, even though most of the dialog comes verbatim from my life. The decision to believe, in the end, will be all yours.
You, dear reader, are the raison d’être for this. Without you, there is no confession. What is a confession good for when there´s no priest in the booth? You bring me redemption, and sometimes, I deliver it to you. We form a clandestine alliance, you and I, and for the most part, we both remain hidden in the dark. I´d like to keep it so, but if you choose to come into the light, you can seek me out here.
