It is impossible for the external world to be ontologically and epistemologically superior to the internal world of a person.
It is impossible for the external world to be ontologically and epistemologically superior to the internal world of a person.
― Atrona Grizel
If “gender
nonconformists” were completely alone in the world, they wouldn’t still be so
obsessed with gender transitioning or even the outward expression of their
sexuality.
―
Atrona Grizel
Being
“changeable” does not necessarily mean being open to views; most of the time,
it means being defenseless to loss of self. A person who carries such a
liquefied identity eventually drowns in its own water.
―
Atrona Grizel
On rainy or snowy
days, even though my outward self reflects the harsh and closed nature of the
weather, my inner self still reflects its hidden paradise. That is, it softens;
I grow as light as a feather. Why do I say this? Perhaps so someone might learn
to read my relationship with the weather. A “big” gift given on a sunny day
would probably leave little impression on me. A “small” gift given on a cloudy
day, however, would overshadow that “big” one.
―
Atrona Grizel
Why am I drawn
not to “liberal-democratic freedom utopias” like Canada, Finland, or
Switzerland, but instead to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea? It is not because of politics, but
because these regimes embody extreme intensity, in terms of bloody power
struggles; self-reliance, meaning self-sustaining economies rather than
interdependence; necessity, in the sense that their very nature allows no
alternative; secrecy, marked by the absence of meaningful information for
outsiders; control, with the state monitoring every aspect of life; adversity,
created by international boycotts and sanctions; exile from convention, through
their incompatibility with the international community; identity masking,
through state propaganda and media; brutal honesty, in the sense of lacking
Western-style hypocrisy; the construction of an alternative reality, creating
worlds of their own rather than submitting to an external one; aesthetic
utopia, in which art is inseparable from structure; total vision, free of the
impulse to erase themselves; and so on. These traits mirror the architecture of
my own soul: depth, secrecy, control, adversity, symbolism, aestheticism,
perfectionism, totality, indirectness, obsessiveness, defiance, resilience,
alienation, discipline, self-containment, self-surveillance, a dreamlike state,
persistent detachment, mental independence, intellectual isolation, emotional
austerity, uncompromising will, reality-building, artistic absolutism,
existential solitude, permanent exile, psychic fortification, strategic
identity, a self-forged mind, refusal to perform, a rich inner life, growth
under pressure, deviation from the norm, purging of social noise, unyielding
design by nature, disgust for modernity, and so on. Someone could even read
articles or encyclopedias about the Soviet Union or North Korea to understand
me better, because the similarity between their characteristics and mine is
striking. They should be read through a symbolist’s lens instead of a
historian’s, though. Yet people may say, “You admire tyrants because you blind
yourself to their tyranny.” With that, they reveal only two things: first, that
they see those states through a flat, linear, materialist lens; and second,
that they still do not understand me, because I am not interested in praising
regimes. I use them as allegories. They do not grasp that propaganda can be an
art form, and that in these states it appears in its most explicit shape.
Within me lies the ability to perceive the deepest beauty in such oppression, a
capacity no ordinary eye possesses.
―
Atrona Grizel
I suppose that,
in a prison, I could survive for my entire life, for I was shaped precisely for
such an existence. What would trouble me is not being surrounded by walls or
forgetting what the sun looks like, but being surrounded by people and noise. I
could live out my life contentedly in a private cell, thanks to my fondness for
solitude. But a communal cell would be torture for me, and this, to me, is the
true meaning of “prison”—not the former. Had I been placed in a communal cell,
I could, by threatening others, have forced the authorities to confine me in
solitary and thus turn their supposed “punishment” into a “reward.” A human
might go mad under such conditions, yet they would scarcely affect me, for I am
no longer human. I am something otherworldly, having abandoned the human
impulses of trust, sociability, reciprocity, recognition, fairness, and the
rest back in adolescence. I am not anti-social, not even “asocial”; I am
post-social.
―
Atrona Grizel
I believe my mind
is far closer to that of an imprisoned criminal than to that of an ordinary
citizen on the outside. For a person who has spent long years under
torture—whether physical, mental, existential, or otherwise—undergoes a
mutation; they become sharp, hardened, independent, strategic, and
essentialist, capable of sacrificing anyone and dismantling anything in order
to preserve themselves and ensure the survival of their body. A war machine in
flesh. The only thing that will attract society’s attention, however, is the
question: “Why are you so ruthless?” A person shaped by long torment is
inevitably transformed, just as metal is tempered in fire. That transformation,
however, appears “monstrous” to those who never had to endure the furnace.
―
Atrona Grizel
When people say
they feel lonely, I can’t believe it. Wasn’t solitude my monopoly? How can it
exist in others too?
― Atrona Grizel
People usually
mean humanity when they use the word “life.” “Being detached from life” is not
being cut off from life itself, but rather from people. “To have fallen out of
life” actually means being distant not from life itself but from the community,
since life is equated with it. “To be lost in life” is not about life itself
but about being confused in a circus cloaking as reality. For if everyone
except the individual were suddenly removed from the planet, expressions like
“detached from life,” “fallen out of life,” or “lost in life” would completely
lose their meaning, which is evidence that society is the only world the
normative mind knows and is capable of imagining.
―
Atrona Grizel
Those who act a
role, of course, do not feel that they are acting—because mastery in acting
consists precisely in making the role cease to be a role, and society is expert
at that.
―
Atrona Grizel
I endured for
years what others could not bear for even an hour. And what was the result?
That I became a philosopher of the inner world.
―
Atrona Grizel
Something that is
right may not necessarily be valid. It may even be forbidden—but that cannot
mean it is wrong. Yet in the minds of the vast majority, there arises, as a
reflex, a negative prejudice toward anything condemned by society. For they
have grown used to equating reality with validity. To them, if someone speaks
the truth, he or she must be loved and respected by everyone. Yet the most
sincere truth is preserved only in seclusion, through the endurance of profound
loneliness for its sake.
―
Atrona Grizel
I am exposed to
the endless repetition of things I already know at school—not in the sense of
lesson subjects, but in general knowledge—and I return just as I came. Why?
Simply because it is compulsory. Yet the school, which to me consists of nothing
but repetition, is mostly seen by my peers as a place where they can ask about
what they do not yet know. The things I learned and made permanent in my memory
through my own effort at the very beginning of my youth are things these
people, who are about to enter adulthood, are only just beginning to learn—or
rather, not even learning, but merely internalizing passively, like a plant
absorbing water. This shows one thing: the absence of intellectual curiosity.
Because they do not experience an intellectual hunger in their natural state,
they are fated to ignorance, and no insight can be instilled in them; only
their minds can be swollen with piles of useless theory—and that is precisely
what is done under the guise of “education” in typical schools. Yet for someone
that sees school as a place of learning, true learning becomes impossible; such
people remain incapable even of knowing or intuiting the simplest things.
― Atrona Grizel
Pleasure demands
constant and repeated stimulation to be felt by the ordinary mind. If it is a
book, one must finish one and move on to the next; if it is music, one must
listen to one and then start another. This is an endless cycle. And since the
pleasure derived from such things is temporary, the only way to sustain it is
to develop some form of addiction to them.
―
Atrona Grizel
There is no love
anymore. In its place, there are emotional games. And since they have never
lived or even witnessed another reality, they call this a “relationship.” The
so-called “relationship advice” that circulates socially is nothing but
propaganda sustaining this diseased norm.
― Atrona Grizel
Embracing pain
strengthens the will; embracing crying expresses the soul; embracing melancholy
deepens insight and perception; embracing boredom fosters creativity and
imagination; embracing misery instills bravery; embracing ridiculousness
preserves sanity; embracing chaos creates peace; embracing invisibility sets
one free; embracing despair teaches acceptance of the inevitable; embracing
pessimism prevents suicide by tempering hope; embracing meaninglessness
cultivates patience and resilience; embracing purposelessness allows one to be
out of the box; embracing rage generates an inexhaustible source of fuel;
embracing solitude unites with the self; embracing uncertainty gives artistic
liminality; embracing temporariness nurtures humour; embracing alienation
liberates from illusions; embracing derealization unveils the very nature of
things; embracing resignation soothes restlessness; embracing unhappiness brings
true happiness; embracing the inability to embrace grants serenity.
― Atrona Grizel