They Never Quite Shine

Still Life with Apples
Paul Cézanne

설거지를 하다가 어떤 생각 내지는 느낌이 계속 드는데 정확히 뭔지 몰라 그릇을 헹구는 것에 집중해버렸다. 그러다가 문득 지난 여름에 읽으면서 밑줄을 주욱 그었던 한 문단이 생각났다:

When a child first catches adults out - when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just - his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing.

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

무너진 세계에 대한 지속적인 예우. 정말 슬프고 민감한 작업이다. 더군다나 아무리 해도 영 익숙해지지 않는 작업이므로 특히 정신을 바짝 차려야 한다.