aortic song and no place for eyes

Ron Dowd
aortic song
linocut, collage 2008, 31 x 27 cm

no place for eyes

tonight cool wind breathes
over the softblack field –

from the field's heart the fruitbat
cries short notes

Field - morning, kangaroo valley

We stayed last night at a friend's place in Kangaroo Valley, and I went walking this morning into the bush and over some fields on the property.

Here's a field I love - it's one that for me resonates with the quintessence of field. (See my GANZ Journal paper and my thesis for more on this interest in fields.)

Staemmler's 2nd scheme of interaction

This is an initial attempt to animate Staemmler's second scheme of interaction between the partners in a couple.


I've shown the shapes shifting because that is what happens in the interactions between the partners - behaviours, and the meanings attributed to them by the other party, are in constant flux; and in constant reaction to a wide range of factors in the field* (cultural and gender to name just two), both in and out of awareness.

Frank Staemmler's schemes of interaction are in his paper Joint Constructions: On the Subject Matter of Gestalt Couple Therapy, Exemplified by Gender-Specific Misunderstandings with Regards to Intimacy, in Robert Lee's recent book The Secret Language of Intimacy.

field: "complex interaction of all effects for a given person". For more on the Gestalt field, see here and my own paper here (PDF).