“Deep down inside the dead trees, I know the secrets that happen as the leaves fall to the ground and die.”

-Heather Deogracia

I know it is the grey.  That deep purple makes the sun absent too.  The winter season just ceases my grasp of breathing as a real puff of air spills out of my lungs.  Almost looms at death as I see the black branched trees and the soil of dead vegetation spread.  My internal earth turns empty and I attempt to cope with my mind that bright days are only about half a year away.

“Fall Fall Feel”  Pen & Ink  8.5 x 11 $75 a print

It always feels like I cope with the waste of a time or the dreariness grasps me daily.  God grasps my wrists and I have the faith that he will take the involuntary movements of my life no matter how cold it gets.  I still don’t know the weather patterns and yet when the snowflakes touch my skin, it is a whisper that calls me to notice the beauty of the death of nature.

Being indoors for months at a time for a full massive winter season, it makes me feel isolated, bereaved and introspective.  I turn inward and use the indoor heat to be mad at myself.  I hold a hatred that is the dead side of my heart.  I am a liar.  I pretend with a smile out of the door.  Pretty brave face even as I tighten my woolen jacket and soar with a sigh to have to leave my safe toasty residence.  The mirror shows when I return from outside, bright wide eyes with glistening tears and pink cheeks as roses.  I keep my beauty in no reflection of the flecks of ice cold wonderlands I face.

“This pesky moody mental illness can turn the lazy into a frantic call to spring to arrive as my life depended on it.”

-Heather Deogracia

Just as the chill here, I tend to extend the blank stare out of the clear space of my house to a why me attitude.  Why did I leave California to this dreariness?  I spent 30 years in the most beautiful of landscapes and very mild temperature changes.  Just feel like I brought this snow on purposely.  Chose it and forever hold my chance to travel the world for the rest of my life.  As I dwell on music on and drawing art, I am in another place in my head.  It’s always a switch away from this reality of frost.

I get frozen in the snow.  Shivering in my thoughts and daydreaming the days of blooming of sunny salvations.  My survival is possible this time of year even with my unbreakable brain.   It is easy for me to slip off my feet onto the glossy rink of ice entrapment on the ground.  I cry and stare out of the ground white and the span of time out of the frosted iced windows in front of me.  Inside of my body, my blood and neurons extends beyond the fall of leaves.