Proximity is not necessarily connection.
Proximity is not necessarily connection.
―
Atrona Grizel
My favorite color
is neither black nor red, but the fusion of the two—black and red together. I
like black on its own, and I like red the same way, yet when they come together
they form something else entirely, something I call cultic nobility. Black is
darkness, the unknown, the unreachable. Red, on the other hand, is fire, power,
energy. When red is surrounded by black, it suggests a rage enclosed by walls,
an aesthetic of restraint—of holding oneself back from full expression. Those
who seek a color combination that is terrifying yet calm at the same time may
turn to this blend of black and red, for it rarely yields a disappointing
result when one knows how to use them.
―
Atrona Grizel
I was always
raised like a baby, even though I did not want this, and naturally I could not
escape a certain comfort. My family dealt with all chores, so I learned
nothing. And in the end I artificially created discomfort for myself. That is,
by making myself suffer. Because only in this way could I harden. By not
suffering, I felt that I was “falling behind” others, and I was determined to
surpass them in this regard, because in my view only those who suffer could
reach deep knowledge. That is why I came to like suffering in a sense, because
it is a kind of rebellion against those who wanted to wrap me in comfort.
―
Atrona Grizel
When a person is
rewarded for hypocrisy and ignored for authenticity, “humanity” becomes
synonymous with the pressure to self-edit.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I’m getting
to know someone new, one of the first questions I ask isn’t “what do you like?”
or “what are your interests?” Instead, it’s almost a password they have to give
to pass: “What do you think about society?” And if the answer I get is positive
in tone, I don’t like it and I immediately “disqualify” that person.
―
Atrona Grizel
If I had not
learned any human language, I would not have had difficulty expressing myself;
what I would have struggled with would be communicating, because I would not share
a language with people. I would create my own language. For example, a movement
that seems meaningless to others would express sentences to me. In fact, this
situation is not very different even now, because I do not think I am already
speaking the same language as people anyway. So if I had never learned any
language, I suppose I would not have lost much.
―
Atrona Grizel
Street dogs,
while resting, seem to carry almost a sad face, because people just pass by
them. This exists even in birds: despite people approaching them, they do not
immediately fly away, because they have grown accustomed to being treated as
invisible. And then there is me, as the only human who notices them, again
invisible and again from a dimension other than that of humans.
―
Atrona Grizel
I deliberately
keep my writings complex so that the herd cannot digest them, and thus, by
failing to understand and leaving in confusion, my writings protect themselves
from the eyes of these enemies of thought. The door is technically open, but
the atmosphere guarantees most will leave. Exactly as intended.
―
Atrona Grizel
I never
experienced sexuality simply as something “pleasure-giving.” On the contrary,
it was always a calamity that plagued me, because my sexual hunger was never
satisfied, and this led me to feel discomfort from even the slightest exposure
to sexuality, for example films with explicit scenes. I carried this feeling
for a very long time, and I still carry it within me. If it were up to me, I
would choose to eliminate sexuality altogether, because I know very well that
after an orgasm the desire for another will come, and when that ends, it will
come again, and this torture will repeat itself in this way. This was the gift
puberty gave me: the torment inflicted on my brain by the two balls in my
groin. There were even times when I dreamed of tearing off my sexual organ,
like removing a small defective part that disrupts the functioning of a machine
for no reason so that the function can be restored.
―
Atrona Grizel
You know city
dwellers: they are not reclusive monks or philosophers but simple, ordinary,
unnecessary urban citizens. They turn their hair gray by working all day; to
shake off this exhaustion they have sex until morning, but then, because of the
unrest that emerges in sexuality, they throw themselves into bars and become
drunkards, while even then carrying a deep sense of suffocation due to
financial strain. When night comes, they lie down in an atmospheric pressure to
which they have grown numb because of its continuity, waiting for the alarm to
wake them. When morning comes and they are forced awake, they involuntarily
wait at the stop, sleepy, go to work, and after enduring the noise of the day,
return home thoroughly irritable, trying to take out their pain on their spouse
and children if they have them. Then they seek refuge in places like the cinema
to clear their heads; there, hypnotized like everyone else, they watch the film
reflected by the projector, burst into laughter, and loosen up completely. Then
they set their eyes on someone of the opposite sex they met there, talk to
them, go to their home, get into bed with them, and have sex, trying to express
their suppressed state through primal moans. Then they leave, never to see that
person again, as if they had used an object, as if wiping themselves on a towel
and tossing it aside. They want to “declare” their “happiness” by sharing this
on social media, but then a brief silence follows, and they immediately fall
into dissatisfaction, reaching the point of even thinking about suicide because
they “cannot attend parties.” After that, they go out onto the balcony, smoke a
cigarette, directing the torment to their lungs, continue their “cool” selfies
there while waiting for future likes, and then get back into bed to experience
similar things again. And this cycle goes on like this This is of course not
true for everyone, but it is obvious that it is familiar to everyone. The main
point I am trying to draw attention to here is that city people live utterly
empty lives: they live only for momentary sedatives, and that is all. A city
dweller is not someone who spends their morning walking in a monastery garden,
their noon meditating at the foothills of mountains, their evening thinking in
seclusion and writing texts, and their night lying on cold stone to develop the
will, enduring the deprivation of a warm, soft bed through an ascetic way of
life. Because there is no thought. There is not even a trace of something like
an inner world. City people are raised to see philosophy not as a way of life
but as a “career field,” and this becomes a convenient excuse they offer for
not engaging with it. And thus a person becomes imprisoned in that social
prison in which other city dwellers are also confined, and mistakes it for
reality. They have to be ordinary, because the place they live in is ordinary,
and they are condemned to see this ordinariness as uniqueness. I cannot find
even a single common topic to talk about with a city dweller, because while the
things they are interested in are buying a house, driving a car, earning a
salary, flirting in bars, having fun in discos, and numbing their brains with
screens, mine are reading, writing, and thinking. There are in fact “solidarity
clubs” in cities devoted to these things, but they are optimized for the
superficial nature of city people and are fake versions of their true forms.
This allows city people to maintain the illusion that they read, write, and
think, and this only distances me from them forever. And… why do I call them
“city dwellers”? What I mean here is not the contrast between city and village,
since villages are just as bad; rather, it is the difference between the life
of ascetic monks and the life of “public citizens.”
― Atrona Grizel