The First “Elsewhere”
A Moment in Being an Older Brother
In what ended up being my final year of living in Southern California, I often took the MetroLink from Old Towne Orange to LA Union Station and explored around on a Saturday. I loved that trip, and I still do.
As an older brother, I want my siblings to know the larger world outside of themselves. For me, this would first happen in a place that was also my “first city”.
LA was the first “elsewhere” I learned in a tangible sense. Learning its basic metro system was confusing and fun for me.
Downtown LA was far enough to envy as a place where bigger things happened and close enough to travel to as a type of adventure. When I founded PRONTO, a publishing company of ideas as tools, the vision I had for that brand was imagined around LA.
I came to have routines there: going to The Last Bookstore, Grand Park, MOCA or The Broad, Grand Central Marketplace. I know a lot of these are touristy places, but I loved them. Coupled with these, LA Union Stations is its own thing. I went there on my birthday once.
I planned a little day out with my youngest sister one Saturday. I wanted her to be on a Subway, to see a major city and the richness around her for whenever she wanted.
We went on the last day of Summer before she started college.
She would later write about it in an essay about a time when she felt happiness.
She would later tell me exactly this. I would later think back to this and let my heart have a tear for how rich and random life can be. That I would simply want to share a nice day with my youngest sister that would become a full example of happiness is a bounty I couldn’t have expected in this life.
More soon,
Trevor