Out for a Sunday morning stroll yesterday with the boy and his dog, Mothra the Rocky Mountain Skank Hound (a fierce puppy farm experiement gone wrong involving Chihuahua and pseudo-Jack Russell Terrier), we encountered this outstanding improvised human shelter in the interstitial woods between a freeway cloverleaf and the Missouri-Pacific railroad tracks, also used by the Amtrak passenger trains that pass through here. I was particularly keen on the talismans over the entry: a picture of Santa Claus with kid and a plastic lightsaber hung from the luminescent blue strand strung across the entrance in a zig-zag like the fibers of some magical force field. What a perfect real-world variation on The Fisher King: the last Jedi is exiled in Texas, fighting the imperial phantoms that swim out from under the freeway at night. I shall return soon to begin my training.
A bit further along, we came across this beautifully damaged double-barreled gumball machine, incongruously installed at the edge of the train tracks. We were afraid that if we inserted a quarter, we would be transported to some grim dystopian Narnia.
Five minutes later or so, a pretty big coyote crossed the tracks fifty yards ahead of us, then walked on up toward Fifth Street. I was too astonished to think to get a picture. Perhaps he was headed to Whole Foods.
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