Reason to read Nelson Algren #37

We Are All Members of One Another, a new introduction to a new edition of Nelson Algren's Man With the Golden Arm, came in last night, and I did not read it until today when I got back from Carmel. Talk about the unexpected places to learn things.

My sister and I were talking about her eldest son and ourselves. It was a continuation of a conversation we had on the way down, about changing ways. E has told me she thinks I need to write a book about aftercare; I am not sure what I have done can be replicated, or taught. Anyway, I was stumbling around for the exact word to described what my nephew needed to do to change his life. I said reflection, as in he needs to reflect on what went wrong with his life and where he wants to go. This describes what I did. Never have I felt it quite encompassed all that I went through during prison - it gets the method right without me understanding why I chose to change in the first place.

Reading the above essay, I think I saw the word I was missing: ambition. One must have the feeling they can change, that the change will not be purposeless. Finding myself alive and having put myself in a position where I put off suicide for the eventual demise of my lungs, I had to decide what to do with the rest of my life. In that decision was ambition.

CC told me this past Sunday she does not know if she can change her life or what good it would do her. She lacks both self-esteem and ambition. Death will come for her before she believes enough in her ambition to try living. I hope the same is not true of my nephew.

sch 2/2