The beginnings of a brand new adventure.

So I haven't post a status on Facebook in about two weeks.

On the one hand this is singularly liberating not being beholden to posting every detail about my life.  Before I moved, I hardly posted and since I moved I have kept up that tradition.  However, the most important point of Facebook is staying in touch with those to whom you may not be physically or viscerally connected, and I have neglected it for it's base purpose.

So to assuage my guilt towards those whom are probably wondering if I have ended up laying in a pool of my own fermented juices, or potentially landed the role of a lifetime moving Patrick Stewart's reading glasses from one dressing room to another.  Here is a blog of my ramblings, and my musings.  My thoughts, my feelings and the general upkeep that is the life of this new Manhattan-nite, Brian Edward Levario.

For those of you who are new to chiming in,  I have recently moved to New York City.  After spending 27 years of living in a small desert town named Tucson that turned out to be quite more historical, and quite less small then living there seemed to suggest.  Tucson is a brown, dry place who's idea of a lawn consists of sanded down multi colored rocks that get to temperatures of about 120 degrees in the summer, and about 20 degrees in the winter....And by winter I mean the two weeks in December in which the blazing ball of oppression decides to give you a reprieve from it's flaming UV clutches.   As a child you learn that these rocks are the symbol of new homes, or new renovation.  Blocking out the dry infertile clay bed that only seems to want to sprout dandelions or little thorns.   If you were me, these rocks also meant warfare. Gathering your group of poor neighborhood kids, a development would come in or some new homeowner would decide it was time for a project, and here the truck would come dumping this giant pile of small pebbles sized grenades.   You would break into your groups, grab a handful, and then jet into the nearest alleyway, finding the grimiest piece of discarded wood you could and begin the trench warfare that was your childhood.  

Now, this kind of behavior could only happen when the temperature was mild, which in Tucson meant October.  After and before that you would have to regale yourself of the finer aspects of outside playing, which generally devolved into who could find the shadiest tree to sit under and complain about the heat.  I swear, you learned how to smell the sun growing up in Southern Arizona.  Most summers I would spend badly diving, and adequately swimming in one of our local sports clubs and looking forward to when October would roll around again and I would get to throw the stones.

Other than the heat, which I promise you is like the friend who is far too loud and doesn't understand the notion of personal space, Tucson was a lovely place to grow up, and I feel like I was on the cusp of so many new beginnings with it.   The U of A is there, and so during the school year if you traveled west of Alvernon you were inundated with the young people who were far too tan and far too blonde for their own good, trying to make a beach town of what is most assuredly the capitol of all Cactus.   From my parents good graces, and their reluctance to send another one of their kids to the local high school, I got to go to one of the more prestigious high schools in the area.   Tucson High is right next to downtown, and at the time our downtown consisted of a cute little street that positively burst with charm... and the only local gay bookstore (something I will get into in a later blog post) You followed the street down, through an underpass that took FOREVER to complete (Prince Rd exit anyone?) and came out to the 5 or 6 "tall" buildings that composed our bustling metropolis.   We had a famous haunted hotel, and a pretty famous theatre that bands and singers performed at regularly.    The point that I am trying to make is this, Tucson is a very flat place in comparison to almost anywhere else that I have seen.  Except for Texas.  One should never have to drive through texas.

Never.

Anyway,  going to high school where I did enabled me to have a lot more freedoms than I feel most high schoolers in Tucson had.  I got to have New York Style Pizza most Wednesdays. (And I can safely say now, guys, Brooklyn Pizza does it justice so go there, and frequently) and I got to explore the basic and effervescent aromatic pleasure that is old human and urine.  Basically, high school and that adorable, fragrant, unforgettable avenue(4th Avenute) was my foreshadowing of living in Manhattan.  

As I was leaving Tucson I was struck with simply how much change has come to the place.  Downtown is getting pretty big now, and has a rail system that is nigh on functional that can transport students from their dorms straight down 4th Avenue and deposit them downtown.  Where they will inevitably visit one of the many chains, and privately owned bars, for overpriced specialty drinks and cheap cheap Corona beer.  The El Con mall has finally become something profitable, and the arts are spreading like wildfire straight up into Oro Valley.  All in all, Tucson is getting bigger, and is a far cry from the one storied adobes that one may imagine in Southern Arizona.

I don't mean to bore you with the details of what most of you probably already know, but I wanted to stress the importance of these visceral memories of mine as I made this giant change.  See, I haven't been writing not because I didn't want to, but because I truly did not know how to put into words what I have been realizing more and more.

I am proud of where I come from.  Truly.  So many people flee Tucson because they hate it, or because they say there is nothing to do.  And for the longest time, I simply agreed with them.  Because yeah, in comparison to a place that has an entire area devoted to pure advertisement in which the lights are so bright they block out the sun, Tucson is small.  Tucson likes things closing at 11:00 PM, and likes to open them up at 10.  It likes things to be a lot slower, especially in regards to construction.(Looking at you, Houghton) There is not the same sense of urgency that I have discovered in my one week of being here.  But what there is is a spirit, and what there is is an ability to make the city into whatever you want it to be.  So yes, it can be awful, and conservative, and stifling, and brown.  And yes, it can be slow and hot, and tepid and creatively flat.  But I made a choice while living there to live a life, and through that choice was blessed with so much engaging and bursting vitality.   Tucson, like the rest of the world, is what you make of it.  And what I made of my Tucson was a place that I cannot wait to go back and see.

I didn't leave because I was running, I left because I wanted to live more.  See more.  Be more.  And from what I have seen so far.  I have undeniably made the right choice.

Perhaps in my next post, I will actually talk about what it is like to live in New York.  :-)

We'll see.