the big one.

rubble is hard to deal with. there's only soo much creative juice to be tapped from day to day. and when you've got to think of ways to make bikes out of wine barrels before breakfast, and figure out an irrigation system for the sustainable farm at dolores park by lunch, the juices are exhausted before you even get up. sometimes they've been tapped out for days.
but everyone seems to know that you asked for this big one to happen. you willed it into being. and now, it's kind of your job to give them all a better life. and even though you don't think it's your place to tell people what to do: they keep asking, anyways.
so it's not even a question of how do i assert myself, or why do i assert myself, but how do i come up with an adequate solution to the problem before my morning coffee?
and before she went to sleep, before her head allowed her a few hours, a grace period, between a harrowing existence filled with decisions and craft and managing and leading, before her left earlobe hit the pillow, she thought: why rebuild at all?

the big one.

avoiding hierarchical structure is tough when there are strict guidelines to follow, and an ideal to cement into the real world around you. there isn't any space left, really, for people to press their palms into the ground, leave lasting notes of love, footprints of encouragement; you ant the cement to harden before it even its the ground. and in essence, you don't want it to live at all.
see that's the problem with ideals. they don't offer any breathing space.
and when reconstructing an entire town, nay, an entire metropolitan area, and wanting it to fit into your ideals, you encounter some problems.
i mean, first of all, sometimes the goddamn trees don't want to grow where they should. so what if hunter's point is a nuclear wasteland? so what if downtown hasn't seen a viable form of natural growth in over a half a century? The glimmering sidewalks are even prettier now that they're riddled with cracks.