A single raindrop contains more insight than whole philosophies.
A single raindrop contains more insight than whole philosophies.
―
Atrona Grizel
The rain falls: I
watch the raindrops cling to the window as if they were old friends or admirers
who, having triumphed in battle, have finally come to see me—victorious
conquerors of the sky after a long struggle. These raindrops resemble kamikaze
pilots: they stick to my window solely for the sake of seeing me, and once that
happens, they vanish. A raindrop’s lifespan is predetermined; it dies right
after it falls. I sense their intent in dying, as if they embrace death for
something undeniably worth it—a moment of contact with me, the only being who
understands their language. To touch the windowpane is their dream. Once
achieved, they die. Yet, they fall again and again; if not today, then surely
tomorrow.
―
Atrona Grizel
The DPRK’s Korean
makes me perceive anime through an unintentionally comic lens. Because Korean
and Japanese share certain visual and phonetic similarities, this creates a
peculiar duality when encountering this kind of East Asian script. On one hand,
it evokes images of cute, hopeful, and affectionate characters; on the other,
it immediately conjures the image of an isolationist, paranoid, totalitarian
state. As a deliberately cruel prank, I would like to make someone who loves
manga but lacks a deep understanding of East Asian languages watch a video that
begins with such writing. This would be someone who, upon seeing that dense,
unfamiliar script, instantly associates it with either South Korea or Japan and
mentally links it to pastel colors like pink and white. The opening would
display exactly the kind of letters commonly seen in manga, causing the viewer
to relax, expecting a playful, innocent, and gentle world to unfold. As the
video continues, however, it would gradually reveal itself to be a North Korean
propaganda film. The writing would remain unchanged, because it is already in
Korean, a language North Korea also uses. Unable to reconcile what they are
seeing with what they expected, the viewer would end up confused, distressed,
and ultimately leave in tears.
―
Atrona Grizel
Rarely, it snows.
Yet, as rare as it is, it holds immense power. The sky smooths over the
surface; the world wraps itself in silence. The relentless noise vanishes. On
such days, even schools and workplaces may close, for snow takes over
everything—it refuses to allow the “daily routine” to continue. The school
empties. The office shuts. The factory halts. The train freezes. The bus
disappears. The airport sleeps. The court closes. The bank locks. The shop
darkens. The café stills. The bell forgets. The phone dies. The calendar
vanishes. The clock stutters. The agenda burns. Routine collapses. Noise
ceases. Earth exhales. Civilization itself surrenders, momentarily, to
stillness. A silent coup. From my corner, watching this collapse—however brief
and temporary—of all the nightmarish systems humans have built fills me with
intense joy. I seek not comfort, for it is nowhere to be found—I seek rupture,
a break in the program, a moment of rest.
―
Atrona Grizel
The thing that
warms my heart about socialism is not that it has achieved equality, but that
it has imagined equality. Because I come from this root: when I first entered
the world of thought, I was a socialist—in other words, as soon as I entered
adolescence, I found Marx, Engels, Lenin, and especially Trotsky, mostly for
his definition of the USSR as a “degenerated workers’ state,” to be right.
Because I had not yet formed an individual self. So I felt things with
everyone: others’ weeps became my weeps. But as I grew older, this gave way to
a form of “spiritual aristocracy.” However, the special place socialism holds
in my heart, like a warm home, has not changed, even though I no longer embrace
it. This is because at the core of my deep passion for hierarchies lies my deep
hatred of them.
―
Atrona Grizel
When the sky
closes, I open. But I could never learn with the Sun, that yellow fascist; it
only makes me feel like a vampire facing daylight.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I checked
the weather and saw a week filled with rain ahead, I sometimes felt an almost childlike
joy, as if eager to celebrate a miraculous victory. Thanks to the rain, daily
life among humans becomes more bearable. The clouds and raindrops give me
immense strength; through them I grow indifferent to the entire world, and that
distance grants me a strange sense of expansion and courage. My creativity
reaches its peak thanks to the easing of ordinary reality that suppresses it,
and that is why my most productive periods are during such gloomy weather. When
the sky clears, I return from the life of a bombastic god to my cave-dwelling,
bat-like existence. I actually only live in overcast weather. I am nothing more
than a flower that camouflages itself and waits during clear weather in order
to bloom again when the sky is closed. And yes, I mean it: a flower that blooms
not in the sun but in the rain.
―
Atrona Grizel
If a person were
cared for and loved by everyone, those who cared for and loved them would lose
all value.
―
Atrona Grizel
Lucid ones learn
personally that all life is performance and that only those who are
persistently self-aware are truly honest—honest enough to know that even
honesty itself is a kind of theater.
―
Atrona Grizel
Institutions
treat the personal traits of adolescents not as an individual’s own universe,
but as changes to be recorded on paper and data to be recorded, categorized,
and managed in the evolution of an animal. If their families declare who they
are, that settles it; because even if the words of “inexperienced youths” are
acknowledged, they will never be taken seriously. Somehow, it was people who
knew nothing about my inner self who wrote down who I was, and simply because
my bodily age was still small, their words—not mine—were the ones that counted.
If I opposed them, if I said, “But they don’t know me,” this too would be
dismissed merely as “a sign of rebellion.” Everything I said, even the
slightest physical movement I made, was immediately reported to my parents, and
they would reactively scold me just based on what they were told—without
knowing the actual reality or even bothering to ask me about it. Hence, I was
left with two options: speak and be pathologized; stay silent and be misread. I
preferred the second. So I stayed silent. For years. I know very well what it
means to fear that all my passions, thoughts, and feelings—in short, my very
being—might be seen as “problematic.” Not because I was afraid of being
different, but because if I appeared that way to the outside world, they would
“intervene” to suppress this “deviance,” and in doing so they would suffocate
me even more.
―
Atrona Grizel
While I write
poems to raindrops, while I compose praises for snowflakes, and while I dream
of and become enchanted by an eternal autumn or winter that surrounds the world
completely, people are still stuck on this part: “I don’t know why, but even
though I’m not depressed, I like rainy weather.”
―
Atrona Grizel
I believe, since
to know is impossible.
―
Atrona Grizel
The person who
takes others’ opinions seriously and contemplates them has not witnessed the
rule of swamp and the law of wasteland underlying them.
―
Atrona Grizel
I felt like my
mere existence was implicitly condemned in every bureaucratic environment I entered.
I remember how I was defined—an act of reduction, and thus humiliation—to
others with terms that I detest by my parents: “stubborn,” “uncompromising,”
“antisocial,” and so on. On paper, though, I was wonderful: “successful,”
“self-confident,” “family-loving,” and the like. I remember reading the remark:
“It would be good if you helped our child integrate into society.” I also
remember that I was obliged to deliver this paper to the authorities with my
own hands. And finally, I remember crossing out such writings and “correcting”
them each time, so that, because of my personal traits, I would not “draw too
much suspicion” and be taken into the interrogation room. That is how life
continued—inside me, behind or under the bushes. And none of them ever learned
that my “silentness,” my “stubbornness,” and my “arrogance” were not part of my
natural personality, but rather old allies—voluntary and dutiful—used to fight
the outside world. Why did I direct the arrows outward instead of at myself?
Because I’ve been too aware and too proud in this awareness since birth to
attempt blaming myself for even a brief moment.
―
Atrona Grizel
Truth is the
biggest illusion. Hence, the ultimate liberation is not to search for “truth,”
but to become the creator of illusions that are stronger than it.
―
Atrona Grizel
The only
fundamental reason why people keep pondering the world and why countless
philosophical theories and doctrines have been produced is simply because they
are trapped here and have nothing else to do with it. If humans were to be in
another world, they would then think about that world instead and would never
even be aware of the existence of this one. And this applies, in the broadest
sense, to the entire universe as well. Humans think about this specific universe
only because no other is within their grasp. Had they been in another universe,
this one might have vanished without ever being discovered.
― Atrona Grizel