Jay Brida

Getting there from here

I wanted to write about traveling before I had traveled or could write with any real facility. The romance of the road, of distances, the lure of a map to a 10 year old made the world seem vibrant. There were small dots there where there were people, monuments, some story behind each one who knew what one would find there — yet there they were, a constellation charted on my schoolroom walls, filled with fantasies. At that point, I had decided that I could see these places as what I knew to be called a "foreign correspondent". I knew they were reporters, but not ones at a desk. They worked OUT THERE, in these exotic dots, taking in wars, peace, progress, whatever they found. Years later, I carved out a kind of a niche in journalism, some high-end, a few trips tucked in — one to the border in Reynosa, Mexico with a writing mentor of mine (a foreign correspondent at last!), where we covered an INS case that was taking place in McAllen, TX with ties on the other side of the Rio Grande. Journalism lost its luster after a time, writing for and about Framingham, MA, when the grand vistas I had in my mind had shrunk to covering local politics in what was literally the country's largest town (not city, which anyone from Framingham will tell you means they still hold town meetings in the old New England style, despite a population of more than 70K). Eventually, the epiphany that I was only writing the space between the ads led me to advertising, which in a neat symmetry, led me back to a kind of journalism at Audi magazine, which, in turn, allowed me the opportunity to write about places I used to dream about on those maps so many years ago.