As a child I was very afraid of angels. It was mostly that I was afraid of aliens, and angels seemed eerily similar to aliens: too many eyes canonically, very bright, filled with lore. I did not like the idea of entities that could arrive and communicate with us at any time. I did not like that the angels were so terrifying looking that they had to say, "Be not afraid" whenever they appeared. I did not like that E.T. quivered so much. It is a fear that as an adult I recognize as mostly a fear of the unknown, the uncontrollable. Now I am only really afraid of voices in the Appalachian woods and uncanny urban legends that allow me to believe that these kind of encounters may be possible. But I still would not like to meet an angel or an alien.
This has been a big week for bravery for me as it was Wings Week on this website, and I kept expecting angels to appear. I was also reading Marie-Helene Bertino's Beautyland, which was recommended to me by several people here, and which I found so enchanting that after I finished it last night I had to lie down on the floor for a little while because I felt haunted by it and consumed with envy. It is a book about a girl who is an alien, or at least believes she is one. She does not belong, whatever it is. And that's kind of the key to the first half of the book's beauty: Many children believe that they are special, that something must have gone terribly wrong for them to have ended up in such a normal, boring life with normal, boring circumstances and a normal, boring future.
