A person must possess courage. The courage to render reality unreal, and unreality real.
A person must possess courage. The courage to render reality unreal, and unreality real.
―
Atrona Grizel
The person I have
now turned into has seen many wars. Born and raised on the battlefield, the roar
of bombs and the constant sense of terror they bring has never ceased. A people
under attack discovered him as a means to cope with the enemy, and an entire
nation carried him on its shoulders and turned him into a national hero.
Thousands of days of siege eventually led them to raise not a white, but a
black flag on the bastion. Thus, mental superiority was achieved, and the inner
world began to ravage the outer world without even taking a single step outside
the front line.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I cry, I
feel that my soul is expressing itself freely, and therefore—even if it is
pain—I allow it, and in doing so I find relief. Because all the times when I do
not cry are the times when my crying has been brushed aside. For the only thing
that can be offered to existence is tears.
―
Atrona Grizel
Sometimes I’m
afraid to look at people’s faces. It’s not a social fear but an ontological
one. Standing before me is a machine that has no consciousness, yet moves as if
it were alive—and on top of that, it’s programmed to believe so strongly that
it is alive that when I look at it, it stares straight back into my eyes as if
it truly existed. Even its organs—its ”wires and wheels”—keep toiling away,
unaware of all this, because that’s all they care about anyway. They don’t care
what kind of body they’re in. Instead, the body feels and acts like a “self,”
and in doing so, it seems to retaliate against me. I don’t like that machine
gaze, so I avoid it.
―
Atrona Grizel
While writing, I
never imagine a reader, because I write not for anyone else but solely for
myself. If I cared about being listened to, I would also have to care, in some
way, about persuasion—but I dried up all feeling for debate long ago, and so I
don’t really care about what the other side thinks about my thoughts. Because I
no longer pour essays; I dictate decrees. Most writing wants a reader; my
writing wants a “survivor.”
―
Atrona Grizel
Because I have
been constantly judged and criticized, I have developed a deep sensitivity to
this, even if not emotionally, then at least intellectually; I believe I can
sense all of it in advance, and thus I turn my texts into universes closed in
on themselves in order to refute them at the place where they stand before they
even reach me. Their being universes, that is, their vastness and complicated
nature, stands in the way of understanding, and since people cannot criticize
what they do not understand, this is thereby prevented. And the fact that this
universe is closed means that it allows no place for other universes, because
it simply does not care about them, and so it determines its own laws and shows
indifference to the laws of others. In other words, it is the dictator of
reality. I am not doing this out of “fear of criticism”; it just seems that the
only way my writings can be read “accurately” is to forbid criticism in order
to force readers to focus on the deeper layer behind my words rather than on
“argumentation.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I imagine myself
walking through the streets of the post-apocalyptic Pripyat reclaimed by
nature, and my eyes catch the roof of a gray, crumbling apartment building.
There I see the Soviet emblem. Worn, yet frozen in time. It is still standing
upright. It is as if it is looking at me. Or at the entire city, I do not know.
But it definitely sees me as well; from that height, everything on the ground
is visible. And so I find myself in a mutual relationship, and my feeling of
being alone disappears. There is not a single person around, and that is enough
to add an imaginary beauty and a thrilling majesty to this context. The ghost
of the USSR is still in Eastern Europe.
―
Atrona Grizel
While the two
main physical spaces that ease suffocating thoughts are hospital corridors and
cemetery paths, the only true place is the inner world, because even the relief
that comes from physical spaces is tied to one’s own perception. This is why,
to relieve my emotions during heavy times, I prefer retreating into myself
rather than going out for a walk; after all, the two are, in a sense, the same
to me.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even when people
tell me, “You are very rude,” what they are referring to is not my personality
or my worldview, but the “repulsiveness of my style.” I can easily sense this.
In other words, what they mean is this: “Present yourself in a more normal way
on the outside so that you will be liked.” There is not even any real reference
to my identity, because the only thing they care about is how I “reflect my
style.” Capitalist consumerism has exploited personalities, turning them into
toys that can be played with through clothes, mottos, hair colours, jewelry,
and tattoos, and so the only “personality” people now possess has become their
image.
―
Atrona Grizel
You don’t need to
design plans to get people off your back. It’s enough to just honestly say
what’s on your mind. None of them would be able to endure such transparency. If
there were no hypocrisy, communication would not exist in the first place.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I left my
family, the first freedom I felt was the freedom to commit suicide.
―
Atrona Grizel
Making me lose my
mind is, actually, not that hard. It does not require humiliation or scolding.
All that’s needed is to force me to listen to commercials, watch
advertisements, and absorb an endless stream of brand propaganda from morning
until night. The application on my computer says it has blocked millions of
advertisements so far. Easy to say: millions… I can only pity the field that
has turned the production of empty content into an occupation.
―
Atrona Grizel
The truth of a
statement lies in how specifically it addresses a group. The smaller the
minority it reaches, the more true it is. If it reaches large masses, then it
has sacrificed its truth for the sake of power, because it is impossible for a
statement that reaches everyone to carry any depth. Masses are not made for
reality.
―
Atrona Grizel
In a country
ruled by a people who struggle from morning to night just to keep their
stomachs full, thought does not develop, because there is not even time to
think. And since life is lived on the brink, since what fills the stomach is
not questioning but bread, the absence of thought is not even felt. I imagine
myself in the middle of a filthy and ignorant city in the Middle East, in the
very center of people who are all rushing here and there, and the only thing I
feel is absolute nonrecognition. You cannot talk philosophy with the typical
poor people who, the moment they see you, try to shove something into your
hands to sell it to you. You cannot explain to them the opium-like dependence
of societies on “purpose” or the multiple and complex dimensions of the
universe. They will neither understand it nor care about it. And since these
identical types, differing only in age, cover an entire country, you not only
feel but also become fully convinced with your whole being that you are the
only conscious entity among millions, unable to find a single real person in
that country.
―
Atrona Grizel
My pride doesn’t
come from taking myself seriously but from not taking seriously those who are
not me. So humiliation cannot destroy it, because it isn’t even something tied
to me; it’s tied to the universe. What kind of tiny human noise could defeat a
cosmic ego that has no interest whatsoever in the concept of “honour”?
― Atrona Grizel
Nietzsche’s
philosophy is exploited in three main ways: one, by materialists and hedonists,
who interpret his concept of the “affirmation of life” as the pursuit of
constant pleasure and pride in it; another, by fascists and National
Socialists, who perceive “self-overcoming” as a justification for genocide and
tyranny; and a third, by modern teenagers and social media addicts, who
idealize the “Übermensch” using superficial information they acquired from the
internet solely to gain social popularity.
― Atrona Grizel