Suffering is not painful but familiar and even safe for those who constantly suffer.
Suffering is not painful but familiar and even safe for those who constantly suffer.
―
Atrona Grizel
For those who
live in excess, this excess is no longer an excess but simply what is usual.
Those who call them “extreme” are only the ones who encounter them
occasionally, in other words, those who live outside it. Yet for someone who
already swims in deep waters, nothing will feel deep to them, and for that very
reason, depth itself will lose its effect. When every experience is heavy,
light experiences that are ordinary for others will feel empty and even
disturbing to such people; but because they live everything with heaviness,
they will also grow accustomed to that intensity.
―
Atrona Grizel
To be able to see
the human behind my writings in a naked form means being able to see that I do
not actually mean many of the things I say, and that I write them almost
deliberately in order to imply other things. For example, even if I say “yes”
to something in one of my texts, this may in fact mean “no”; I may be
pretending to approve in order to draw attention to something in a deliberate
and subtle way. Those who try to read it only at face value will, at most, see
merely “a sharp mind,” because they will simply assume that I mean everything
exactly as I state it. These are often casual readers, and casual readers can
read nothing. But those who know how to read it together with the meanings that
lie beneath will remain loyal not to my writings themselves but to the person
behind them, and thus, by not reducing this human to their philosophy, will see
the innocent presence behind this dark mind.
―
Atrona Grizel
I do not see
society and the external world as rigidly black. But I suppose they are not
very far from it either: dark gray. The individual and the inner world,
however, feel completely white to me.
―
Atrona Grizel
Nature is built upon conformity; it despises the excessive. It does not want its creations to be too beautiful, too ugly, too thin, too fat, too stupid, nor too intelligent—because whoever steps outside its molds then slips beyond its jurisdiction. Such individuals, by their mere singularity, stand outside the herd; and to be outside the herd is bad news for genes. For if these individualistic minds were to reproduce, genes would be endangered: extremes would become normalized, and because they would fail to adapt to the environment, the survival of the species would be imperiled. Even imagining all humanity as either extremely stupid or extremely intelligent plunges the entire world into pain and disorder. That is why biology favors the average human and elevates them—because they are the easiest to control. Genius, by contrast, is hostile to biological life. Because genius, at its core, is a biological anomaly. Intelligence is metabolically costly and evolutionarily unreliable, a trait that demands enormous energy while offering no guaranteed reproductive return, since highly intelligent individuals do not reliably reproduce in ways that distribute their genes as unconsciously as their animalistic peers. Evolution, therefore, keeps intelligence on a strict budget. There is a reason no species has casually evolved extreme intelligence: the average mind is the biologically stable one. To be unusually smart is a biological crime and almost always results in isolation and alienation, which can be seen as evolution’s punishment, because it is evolution itself that makes sociality and intimacy pleasant and therefore uses them as weapons against the biology-defying individual. Nature’s war on the genius results in this extraordinary person developing frustration and resentment, both naturally unpleasant states, which discourages the emergence and survival of these individuals and favours instead instinct-driven organisms that reproduce more efficiently, thereby serving the dictatorship of genes across generations.
―
Atrona Grizel
Pain,
deprivation, threat, and isolation all come from outside me. Therefore, I can
appropriate them, turning them into any internal form I choose. Torture is
honest. It draws a line and declares an enemy. As long as there is a wall, I
know where I stand. Compulsory normalization is different because it always
attacks indirectly. It does not strike; it dissolves. There is no solid wall to
push against. Prisons, interrogations, threats, even brutality announce
themselves as power. I can name them, despise them, frame them, and eventually
outgrow them within myself. I can endure suffering as long as it remains mine.
But the moment suffering is translated into a symptom, “corrected,” “treated,”
or “improved,” I am erased. Normalization is power that denies being power. It
calls itself care, health, functionality, reintegration, well-being, and other
such fictions. It does not confront me; it “explains” me. That is why it is the
most dangerous form of torture exercised over me. If you want to effectively
torture me, there’s no need to invent anything big; it’s enough to force me to
engage in small talk, job interviews, wellness language, and displays of
shallow empathy. Because my freedom depends on separation from social and
cultural grammar. When society stops opposing me and begins welcoming me, or
pretending to welcome me while insisting on it, I lose my coordinates. Not
because I require rejection, but because acceptance demands translation. And
whatever survives translation is never what I was.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I was
little, I didn’t want to commit suicide because I hadn’t yet lived; when I grew
up, I didn’t want to commit suicide because I had become accustomed to living.
―
Atrona Grizel
During my
adolescence, I used to feel unhappy because I lived in such a dull house. In
adulthood, I began to feel content simply because I had a roof over my head, no
matter how it was. Because survival replaced desire. This is not maturity; it
is the death of creativity. The more a person accepts things as they are, it is
not patience they gain, but usually cognitive erosion. Society calls this
“growing up”; I call it the death of imagination, because it is actively killed
by society under the guise of “confronting life’s realities.”
―
Atrona Grizel
There are people
who die without ever having existed. They are not recorded in history, and for
that reason alone they are treated as if they never existed. Yet they are
everywhere. They have always existed. In every era and in every place. Think of
a hungry homeless person from the underclass, reduced to the point of eating
grass to survive. No one will ever know what that person lived through in their
life, because those who suffer the most often leave the least trace, because
they do not even have the luxury of leaving traces.
―
Atrona Grizel
I like cold
weather; it freezes illusions to death. Especially that one: that the world is
a warm and welcoming place. That is, of course, painful.
―
Atrona Grizel
The translation
of “I hate you!” is “I can’t govern you!”
―
Atrona Grizel
When rest becomes
a “right” granted by the state, it ceases to be rest, because the state then
interferes even in when a person rests. In that situation, no one truly rests.
They may go to parks and beaches to rest, but they forget this: even the time
granted to them to go there is recognized by the state. In other words, the
state practically says: “You may rest during this period, and then you will
return to work for me.” Can one rest with the fear that this time will end? Yet
this is always what happens. The state never grants the right to rest for an
infinite duration. Accordingly, all the periods of rest it does grant are, in
essence, temporary intervals put in place to make work more endurable.
―
Atrona Grizel
If societies
learn and accept that there are forms of life other than social life, they
dissolve themselves. That is precisely why, when “life” is mentioned, it is a
vital necessity for the ordinary majority that what is meant is social life.
―
Atrona Grizel
Because I am
forced to live among others, at random hours, just as I am fully absorbed in my
work and have forgotten the physical world through intense concentration, the
sound of a drill begins beyond the walls, and I am dragged back into the
physical world with great rage. I do not want this, yet such things can still
happen, because the state can shamelessly regard cramming people into tight
boxes as “meeting the housing need.” As a result, random people whose names I
do not even know are able to disturb me in this way. I remember moments when I
had fits of rage because of this, moments of insanity in which I struck the
walls with my hands, kicked objects, and even injured myself as a result. I can
even picture myself trying to console someone who, like me, is profoundly
frustrated by that noise, telling them, “This will pass; just endure a bit
longer,” as if we were in the middle of a war. What are these inhuman
conditions? At the root of this is not childish anger, but a deep conviction:
no one may interfere in my life, not even slightly, absolutely no one…
―
Atrona Grizel
When I fall ill,
pharmacists rejoice: they will make money. But no. Whatever happens to my body,
I refuse to use medication unless my condition clearly reaches a disruptive
level. I may be tired. I may feel dizzy. Everything may ache. But even these
things do not really “concern” me, because I am not responsible for my body; my
body is responsible for me. I can understand those who kill themselves by going
on hunger strikes, because that steel will exists in me as well, or rather, a
profound indifference toward this biological vehicle that carries me.
― Atrona Grizel