My Lovely City

Hello unto whoever this my be read by:

This week has been a really challenging one for me for both professional and personal reasons. Professionally I’m working, as they say, to the bone. But’s it’s wonderful work, all full of potential and growth. I’ve been meeting scores of charismatic, warm and sexy people and of course, I’m grateful.

Personally, those that have previoulsy been close to me have been challenging to say the least. Friends I care about are far away and my haters are near. Such is life. Sometimes when I’m looking for guidance I remember this poem by Kipling. My father, a Brit vaudevillian who grow up tap dancing for the Allied Forces during World War II, used to make me recite it every year on his birthday. And while he and I no longer talk, it’s one of the few things I’ve taken away from that relationship worth holding onto. I last spoke it at my ex’s funeral and haven’t touched it till today. It’s stodgy to say the least, but earnest, sincere and full of wisdom for a man. Or anyone. Give it a read:

If

If you can keep your head when all about you 
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you; 
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, 
But make allowance for their doubting too; 
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, 
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies, 
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating, 
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; 
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; 
If you can meet with triumph and disaster 
And treat those two imposters just the same; 
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken 
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, 
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken, 
And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings 
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, 
And lose, and start again at your beginnings 
And never breath a word about your loss; 
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew 
To serve your turn long after they are gone, 
And so hold on when there is nothing in you 
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on”;

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, 
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch; 
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you; 
If all men count with you, but none too much; 
If you can fill the unforgiving minute 
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run - 
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, 
And - which is more - you’ll be a Man my son!