Bill

So now I speak of Bill

I wrote in to the True Blood site that the character of Bill is haunted by his war experience. Of course I understand that conundrum. I had a husband who felt the weight of his war time experiences that effected him all his life. I wish I could of reached out to him and comforted him, as I do wish that Sookie could comfort Bill.

Bill is a complicated character who lives in the shadows of his human life. He is a Vampire who lives in a haunted house of his past life. He sees the shadows of his former human self, a human self he thinks is the far past. The truth is trauma lives through him, as much as he would like to forget it. It is like he is suffering from PTSD. Imagine a Vampire suffering at all. I think he hates it that he remembers the bad times of his life as a human, and if he would only embrace these bad times, he would recapture that human part of himself he desperately wishes he could remember for the sake of his love for Sookie.

Sookie recognizes this suffering though she doesn't fully understand how they came to be. Isn't that like the real the real world. We desperately want to understand another person's suffering but we don't know how.

Interesting, isn't it?

Late Night Truth Telling: Out of the Broom Closet

I come form a long line of people who were witches, whether they actually said the word or not. Among these talented people is my mother. Untrained and natural, my mother has been practicing witchcraft for years though she would never say that she was a witch, primarily because of all the bad press the word has gotten over the centuries.

I was lying in my bed and reading Dead Until Dark for the umpteenth time when my mother ventured up the stairs of my attic bedroom to check on me. She sat in the battered old recliner in my room, near my bed and put my book down and sipped at the single glass of wine I am afforded every evening.

We began talking of all sorts of things, including the paranormal. She spoke of her family and her intentions when she made things. She gave me a precious medicine bag and I slipped it over my head. After flitting around the topic for sometime, I finally came out with it. Just as it was put to me over ten years ago. I said, "Mom, you are a witch, deal with it," I said. She looked at me and asked me how I knew and that is when I came out of the broom closet. "I know this, because I am a practicing witch myself," I looked at her evenly, without wavering.

The revelation of both her and my being a witch was startling for the both of us. She looked at me and said, "I never thought about that because of the injunction in the Bible, suffer not a witch to live," I told her that God's command about witches were about being a witch that dishonors the God she believes in.

It was amazing, suddenly there was ease in the room. We didn't speak anymore on the subject but she was calmer and more relaxed and it seemed that the wall between us that had existed ever since I was made a witch over ten years ago stopped.

I don't know what will happen now, perhaps nothing, perhaps everything, but it is out in the air, and so close to Samhain.