I am filled with hope when I see darkness, not when I see light.
I am filled with hope when I see darkness, not when I see light.
―
Atrona Grizel
I would plan the
city I live in better than the city planners, because I would add artistry to
it, not just architecture. In fact, this resembles city-building games, which I
have always enjoyed. In those games, everything is under my control. For
example, when I place a hospital on the screen, non-player characters immediately
swarm toward it in a robotic manner. This is essentially the same in the
physical world. Being in any place makes me feel like one of those unconscious
decorative figures. Someone has constructed the space to attract people, and if
I am drawn there, I become an ornamental citizen with predefined needs, just
like in a game. For that reason, even going to a park feels like an insult to
me, because I am reduced to a kind of non-player character in someone else’s
game. I prefer building a city to living in one.
―
Atrona Grizel
I have such a
passionate obsession with Pyongyang that I research everything about it, and I
think that if I were suddenly dropped there right now, without any map or GPS,
instead of getting lost, I would feel as if I were in a familiar place, like a
neighborhood left over from my childhood. I believe I know Pyongyang, which I
have never seen in person, better than the city I am currently living in.
―
Atrona Grizel
For most, pain
signals “something is wrong.” For me, pain signals “something is real.” My collapse
would not occur at peak pain but when pain loses explanatory power.
―
Atrona Grizel
Sometimes I find
myself becoming very soft… but even in those moments I feel no desire to kiss
people I see as ordinary, because I already know they would make me regret it.
I used to express this softness in the past, and in those moments I would
become very emotional, not because of a sudden surge of feeling, but out of a
noble gratitude granted to me by the artistry of life itself. I live life as
though it were the reading of a poem. Yet society, of course, never knew how to
deal with this feeling of mine. Society exists not to encourage art but either
to destroy it or, if it does not or cannot destroy it, to exploit it. That is
why I directed this feeling toward a small number of people who might know its
value. Yet I cannot even express it to them, because the moment I do, I feel
artificial and performative. If I were completely myself around those “friends”
while experiencing this feeling, then I would jump like a child, sit in their
laps, and even climb onto their backs, shouting with joy, “Buy me ice cream!”
But in human relationships I am always, always forced to play a role. The whole
matter was actually in me, because experiencing such a beautiful feeling does not
necessarily require that I express it at all. So I settle for loving everything
I love only with my eyes, and those I do not love, I do not love them still, as
if that too were a special gift reserved just for my muses.
―
Atrona Grizel
In emotionally liberal
societies, suffering is interpreted as personal failure. You must “optimize,”
“heal,” “explain,” and “grow.” But in closed societies, it is simply the
default… even revered and worshipped.
―
Atrona Grizel
I passed through
the threshold of solitude and emerged not as a crack, but as a rock…
―
Atrona Grizel
People who
possess and worship institutional authority assume that, thanks to formality,
they can do whatever they want. A school principal, for example, expects
silence the moment they enter the classroom, wants students to fear them, and
so on. Because in their view, they are “the head of the school.” They walk
around with an air of “I created the world,” and with this arrogance they
project the image of a “wise teacher,” strolling with their hands clasped
behind their back. I, on the other hand, see nothing but a waddling penguin.
―
Atrona Grizel
Open negation is
preferable to false affirmation. I would rather live in a world that openly
erases me than in a world that claims to empower me while quietly erasing me.
That is, under totalitarian dictatorships rather than in plutocratic prisons.
―
Atrona Grizel
Political tyranny
is just spiritual loneliness crystallized into public law.
―
Atrona Grizel
What would honor
me is not being congratulated by publishing houses, but writing texts that no
publishing house dares to publish and thus ignores.
―
Atrona Grizel
I live in a country where pretending to be insane or harming oneself is necessary in order to avoid military service. In other countries this could even be considered a violation of human rights, being persecuted for personal characteristics, yet here it is celebrated as a tradition. Because nationalist and collectivist values dominate here, and accordingly they dismiss anarchist and individualist values by calling them “childish” or “egoistic.” A society that sees solitude as inadequacy will, of course, never respect a brilliant loner. Even the compulsory nature of military service is proof of how compulsory sociability itself is, because the mere existence of a hermit exposes the falsity of that assumption. There is nothing more absurd than conscripting a hermit, but since the state does not acknowledge the existence of such people, it counts everyone as social animals embedded in society. I don’t understand why they replace the pen in a writer’s hand with a gun, because this person is simply not made for it. It resembles Bernhard being conscripted into the Austrian army: what would he do in such a situation? Perhaps he would manage to escape. But I won’t be able to escape this unless I have membership in underground organizations that would finance my escape, because refusal is “illegal.” I would even prefer going to prison rather than going to barracks, because even there I would have more freedom and time. That way I could think and write, and with those writings I would thoroughly beat and humiliate the commander who would slap me if I went to him. I will not be the toy of a state that subjects me to twelve years of compulsory schooling, expects me to pay money just to feed myself and stay warm, forces me throughout my life to work in a boring job in a boring society merely to get to the next day, and, as if that were not enough, wants to turn me into a dog that obeys orders by conscripting me through compulsory military service. I have nothing to do with pacifism; I just don’t want to be an obedient toy doll who has no life on its own that will be forcibly sent to the front the moment a conflict breaks out. I have nothing to do with “masculinity” either, because the masculinity of a quarrelsome and noisy barbarian spirit is different from the masculinity of a deep and thoughtful aristocratic spirit.
―
Atrona Grizel
Most introverted
people are simply personalities whose nervous systems are sensitive to stimuli.
They just say, “I like being alone.” Very few say, “I think society is
ontologically unreal and humanity is existentially a mistake, and therefore I
find engaging with it insulting and degrading.” Because in truth they have no
real interest in the external world at all. Their solitude is a personality
trait, and for this reason it is an insult to solitude, because theirs is not
an acquired solitude.
―
Atrona Grizel
Love is worth a
lifetime in only one case: the forgetting of time. And it reaches infinity in
only one case: the transcendence of context.
―
Atrona Grizel
I wish I could
experience the world not inside mortal flesh, but as a more abstract being, for
example as a drifting cloud. But in fact I already am such a cloud; biology is
merely mocking me.
―
Atrona Grizel
I have never been
to space. I have never seen it live, except through photographs and videos. And
that is exactly what makes it beautiful. Because there is undiscoveredness
there. Having seen only the world and not having had the chance to see beyond
the world might even be a kind of fortune, because then an entire universe is
left solely to one’s imagination.
―
Atrona Grizel
Cosmic time and
planetary time are different. One hour on Earth may be one second or one year
on another planet. This shows that earthly organisms are trapped in Earth’s
time and live quite short lives, even though they could live much longer. If a
creature born on Earth were taken to another planet, a lifespan of 100 years
could even become 1,000 years, of course if the necessary habitat were
provided.
―
Atrona Grizel
To love someone
in the external world is to betray the lovers in my inner world. Since the
opposite sex can be experienced most freely in dreams, being physically close
to them destroys the special bond in the inner world with the opposite sex,
into which nothing else intervenes. I will not abandon the girls and women
inside me for a handful of temporary ghosts outside.
―
Atrona Grizel
I am always a stranger to people. I pass through the streets, and they see me and think I am there. But I left the world long ago in order to access my own world and settle there. I was never present in the human world that I always watched from above. People always thought I was speaking by watching my tongue move, but no one ever heard what I actually wanted to say. When I said, “Can I have two whole loaves of bread?” what I meant was this: “Because I am a biological organism dependent on external energy, and because there is no one to run my errands, I force myself into human society and thus neglect my inner world; even though I do not want to enter a shop I do not care about and benefit the seller, I do so because money is the only thing that counts, and because I secretly feel disgusted by this, I do not like going outside; but if I do not go out, I will die of hunger, so I come here, and here I am, telling you to give me bread. And I also remember, each time I go outside out of necessity, that I am trapped in the era I live in—and that if I had been born at a more advanced time, I would not be forced to do so much unnecessary work that machines could do instead.”
―
Atrona Grizel
To treat genders
as equal is an insult to them. Likewise, to blur them is to deny them.
― Atrona Grizel