SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue Two - Journal - Page 16
SINE QUA NON
In the simplest terms, I don9t need to shoot up to write a heroin addict. I just need to
have clarity about what can take a person to the moment in their lives that turns that corner,
which means I need to spend some time with my own turned corners.
If there is any call to action I can ofer, let it be that. Getting into the stillness is a badass
kung fu move for a writer to make. When we can call up those dark layers of psychological
stresses and repressed memories that make up a human being, when a tiny bit of our own
nesh gets to be scraped, examined, and used, we are most of the way to creating a bountiful
protagonist of great beauty and savagery in equal measure, someone devastatingly human.
So, as an author, I fully embrace this idea of my emotional baggage being not only
useful when unpacked, but rich like verdant soil. It is fecundly human and will always teach
me something I need to learn if I9m willing to identify and face. |ere isn9t a breakthrough in
existence that isn9t accompanied by some pain, but what comes out on the other side, always,
is deliverance. And it9s a deliverance worth cultivating and renewing and re-strengthening
every single day, just to live more whole. And especially if we have the inclination to be an
artist, will this practice bring the art out from the deepest places within us.
I began this thought by stating that the yearning to create something artful begins with
love, and I read a powerful phrase once that sealed that for me. |e idea originates with A
Course in Miracles, but I orst read it in Marianne Williamson9s A Return to Love.
