Opening Note

Cities taught me how to live.

I’m writing this on the Thanksgiving holiday at my childhood home outside Chicago. A severe winter storm arrived overnight, my flight was canceled, and it’s like the universe is insisting I stay still long enough to remember who I was before I left.

Chicago was my first classroom. Long car rides across the South Side for school and church; visits to my grandparents on a quiet street off St. Lawrence; weekends with various groups of friends in Beverly, South Shore, and Hyde Park; train rides downtown for ballet, music lessons, design, and (of course) shopping. I learned the world by observing it: the rhythm of neighborhoods, the colors and signage of storefronts, the quiet codes inside every enclave, even the snacks sold on the streets.(Shoutout to the bag of Chews off 79th Street).

Cities teach you who people are.

And who you’re becoming in the middle of them.

I moved to New York in 2008, and I’ve called Harlem home for most of that time. My days weave between small businesses on Seventh Avenue and luxury houses on Gansevoort, between conversations with bodega owners and restaurateurs, and strategy sessions with founders, artists, cultural and political leaders, and real estate developers.

Translation has always been my work.

And my gift.

For years, I’ve journaled every morning -- a ritual I began to take seriously when I lived in Trinidad. Thirty minutes at a minimum: observations, questions, lists, fragments, reflections, visions. Writing has been both my anchor and my way of seeing and navigating the world.

TRG Journal is the next extension of that practice. A cultural notebook about cities, culture, and the spaces we shape. My everyday way of life has unexpectedly become a calling.

For now, consider this the opening note.

A new page.

A new beginning.

---