Gordo Goes to South America Volume 1

A woman stands on the loading platform of the bus terminal in Osorno, Chile. She tries to keep from crying. Her arms are folded tightly against her chest as she peers at the bus to catch a glimpse through a window. She mouths ¨te amo¨ as we pull out and away, eyebrows furrowing slightly, mouth quivering. I look back at her companion behind me, engrossed in a newspaper, expressionless. The bus continues on through the slate gray day, past volcanic ranges and vividly colored housing blocks made dull by the clouds. A little girl sleeps on her mother´s lap, peacefully, as the mother stares out of the window, a private concert in her headphones.


In San Carlos de Bariloche a rag-tag troupe of dogs come limping, dragging and barking, away from the stone plaza, toward the cold, severe shore of Nahuel Huapi, and between chasing motorcycles and digging in the traffic islands for mice, wag around me smiling and nuzzling, accompanying a new friend in need of a friend.


An awkward calf chases some small pigs on a hillside overlooking a dappled green valley on the Gran Isla de Chiloe, the pigs narrowly escaping beneath a ramshackle wooden fence, toward apple trees and freshly cut wood and the smell of cypress smoke. In the distance the fog gathers like a folded comforter, unfurling over the hillsides bringing the stinging and healing rain as I swing silently in a hammock, solitary, tea steaming in a window well, books in my lap, Don Liberato returning to his vast homestead with a chainsaw over one shoulder and a handsome wooden axe over the other.


In Puerto Montt men with scarred faces drink by the bus terminal, and a little boat ferries people to Isla Tenglo where small dark shops await with hot soups and stiff tonics, a single cross illuminating the highest peak on the hill, surrounded by barbed wire. By day, wrapped in our belongings, we wait in the tent as the wind and rain batter us, poles bowing like slight tree limbs, sweeping like an avant garde sound composition, in intervals according to their own logic. But as the rain ceases the arcirises appear, stretching from the andes to the islands, point to point, a multicolored partial halo for the pod of dolphins surfacing in the shallow surf, near the empty bottles of french perfume, boxed wine and plastic bags. Wild blackberries for breakfast and a cardboard fire for the night, stopping even while it was starting, roaring in negative, the black soot an inferno of opposite light.

A Campesino band plays traditional Latin music by a little outcropping in front of a small harbor and restaurant serving Curantos - mesh bags full of leaf-steamed shellfish, potatoes and fresh sausage. The band persuades some people to dance, Chilote style, tissues in hand, bottles of white and red wine littering picnic tables while an adolescent boy exits a wooden boat holding five giant fish. The sun sets over the archipelago as Ibises alarm, Pablo talks politics with some young Chileans from the North, and children run red faced between relatives and friends, receiving pats and admonishments and invitations, finally receiving the high tides and tidings of the night, softly darkening over hills of a thousand greens.

The Bell by Kelli's Starlight Wishes

A new music video for The Bell by Kelli's Starlight Wishes and directed by Kook Teflon. She just released a new album on Aphonia Recordings. This video also features the Hoping Machine which is a portable pyramid designed to collect positive rays from the cosmos. It was created by our good friend and artist Mary Rothlisberger. Yay community!

Dried Petals