what i do now defines me. when i feel hatred at the group of men crowding the sidewalk, smoking and making fun of others with their sneers at me for being a foreign man in their backyard, that is what i am. we are gas and fire, meant to stay away from one another i tell myself. happy to have that behind me, but then comes a long legged pretty, voluptuous woman and for a second our eyes meet, i am filled with the rush of desire and a sense of childhood lust as my heart quickens but at the same time shame and guilt rush in even though nothing has happened. an adulterous outsider and i have yet to reach a block from home, i clear my mind and stop at the light. the sun beats down on me as i wait at the next intersection, it is too much, it beats on me, i am a weathered soul for a brief bit of time. a sun beaten lustrous foreign outsider in a home that is not mine.

these moments define me, confine me but dont paint the whole picture. i am not certain that my ego is even present when i am being painted in pictures as the day goes on. my assistant sees me as lazy, my driver as wasteful and my fellow friends as entitled as i become keenly aware that they are all right. but each mountain has two sides and i do work, i do my best to save and believe luck favors the prepared. i am nothing they think but am certainly what they say, for i am only what others see me as. at least in their worlds.

at lunch i consume a burger with cheese. i am eating the grilled part of a cow, smothered with a melted version of its milk, on bread. i did not catch this animal, but i eat it. cold air blows on me from a machine in the ceiling, i pay with a digital currency that goes up and down that i have very little idea where it all comes from. words pour out as i speak to those who listen, babbling away at ideas and solutions i neither came up with to questions i am still grasping to understand. i am as lost as i ever was, but i think im half way to somewhere.