7:00am

left: from a sketchbook series created a number of years ago: "Message in a Bottle." collage, charcoal acrylic and graphite on paper

Many mornings a friend and I meet in a local park and walk very fast... she mostly talks and I listen and offer support as best I can. My verbal skills are far below mine or anyone's average early in the morning. If I could walk with an IV/Caffeine drip like some people walk with an ipod hanging from their neck we might all be better off.

This morning our conversation took a dangerous turn and a yellow warning light should have started flashing in my head... but no, I was too slow on the draw.

Soon, for a cause I have yet to determine, my friend turned and walked away and said she couldn't do this anymore! (talk to me, walk with me??!!) I was shocked though we do get into trouble when she asks questions, I answer and sometimes the answers upset her... BUT... mainly I listen to her. a little earlier this morning I told a story to try to illustrate a point and she said "you've always got a story, don't you?"
(It was a sad story, too...)

She came back at me and said I am "always just unrelenting - and so and so agrees - it makes us crazy... etc, etc." What?

We continued what has become a tearful walk for me and I listened and expressed my absolute distress because I realized (but did not express) that not only do I FEEL misunderstood most days... that I AM misunderstood. (this isn't the romantic tortured state an adolescent may feel when they first read that great line... Emerson, I think? This makes me think perhaps I am feeling a tinge of early alzheimers or someother disease that affects communication skills... a disorder of some kind?) Perhaps all this time spent working in the studio and in ateliers elsewhere has done more to weaken my communication skills rather than sharpen them.
Whatever... it hurts.

So - I came home and looked up the word unrelenting to try determine more specifically what my friend was referring to. These definitions popped up on Ask.com:

noun·re·lent·ing (ŭn'rĭ-lĕn'tĭng) pronunciation
adj.

1. Having or exhibiting uncompromising determination; unyielding: an unrelenting human rights worker.
2. Not diminishing in intensity, pace, or effort: an unrelenting ice storm.

Firmly, often unreasonably immovable in purpose or will: adamant, adamantine, brassbound, die-hard, grim, implacable, incompliant, inexorable, inflexible, intransigent, iron, obdurate, relentless, remorseless, rigid, stubborn, unbendable, unbending, uncompliant, uncompromising, unyielding. Idioms: stubborn as amuleox. See resist/yield.

unrelenting
adj

Definition: merciless
Antonyms: compassionate, flexible, merciful, relenting, sympathetic

Français (French)
adj. - implacable, acharné (une poursuite)

I now understand that I can be unrelenting when I believe in a cause but when talking to a friend about something I think is unimportant. Unfortunately it wasn't my intention to sound like any of the adjectives described above during our morning walk over something that really didn't affect either one of us in a direct way. I am baffled and then I am not.... more than anything I am frustrated.

If I had a nice cool cave behind my house I would hang out there all summer and make work. I'd tell everyone I am working on a residency in California and that is where I'd stay. No social contact... no telephone... maybe internet access and a good library and a garden roof - for napping. My ideal summer. We'll see.