The act of destruction is simultaneously an act of creation, and vice versa.
The act of destruction is simultaneously an act of creation, and vice versa.
―
Atrona Grizel
Getting
accustomed to anything is to become automatic towards it.
―
Atrona Grizel
Comfort is a
prison. Routine is its lock. And getting used to it is the turning of the key.
―
Atrona Grizel
A foreseeing
person does not get surprised.
―
Atrona Grizel
The borders of
the GDR are still real, because East Germany was erased only on paper. When one
moves from west to east, the world in Germany still changes radically. While
the West is young, noisy, mobile, and capitalist, the East is older, calmer,
and socially warmer. This division appears clearly on maps: election maps show
near-total dominance of different parties in the East and West; income and
wealth maps trace the former border with remarkable precision; unemployment,
population decline, and infrastructure investment maps repeat the same line;
even maps of church membership, vaccination rates, and home ownership reproduce
the old separation. The East appears internally unified and collectively
distinct from the West in this very unity. Daily life reflects this as well:
the East has fewer corporate headquarters, fewer migrants, lower rents, slower
urban rhythms, stronger reliance on public institutions, and a greater emphasis
on local networks and social familiarity, while the West is marked by higher
mobility, denser capital flows, more fragmented communities, and sharper social
competition. In this sense, the ghost that once erected the “anti-fascist
protective wall” is still present, no longer as concrete and barbed wire, but
as a possessing spirit that has entered the body of the Federal Republic of
Germany. This should be read as an accomplishment.
―
Atrona Grizel
I look at him.
His eyes are turned inward.
Even when he looks at me, I am only a minor detail to him.
His focus is elsewhere.
Where? On himself… that is, inward.
He lives within himself.
His lips are
tightly sealed.
How many tongues lie behind them?
Nothing seeps out.
What is he guarding so fiercely?
He has that bushy moustache as if meant to erase the mouth altogether.
What treasure is it hiding?
When he looks at
me, he does not look at my body but into my interior.
As if an entire universe were compressed into that gaze.
The universe is not interested in my shell, but in the existence behind it.
And so, his gaze leaves me naked.
He is internalized to that extent.
He is elevated that much.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I feel the
desire to end my life, that desire is mostly about a divine being like myself
having fallen into such mud. My anger may at most be related to the absurdity
of being fully aware of my own worth, yet seeing so little worth in return from
the world. There is no “escape from pain” or “hopelessness” in it; rather,
there is a wish to stand apart and preserve my originality, as if I were a
treasure whose value is yet unknown by anyone else. By annihilating myself, I
deliver this message: “The world will not be able to corrupt me.”
―
Atrona Grizel
When thought is
medicalized, when expression is seen as a symptom, when insight is regarded as
grandiosity, when passion is turned into “obsession,” when seclusion is
confined to the term “depression,” when worldview is called “irrational,” and
when behavior is presented as “evidence,” there will be nothing left but the
language of the system. The vast majority will think in terms of this corporate
vocabulary, and those who do not will be marginalized. In such a world, the key
is not to be known and reveal oneself but to wear the cloak of invisibility
and, when the time comes, quietly slip away.
―
Atrona Grizel
There has not
been even a single place or time in which I did not feel myself to be the only
sane one among madmen. And yet they demand “proof” of my “sanity”; madmen
cannot be explained to, but that does not invalidate my inner intelligence.
―
Atrona Grizel
I feel utterly
overwhelmed. I’m thinking about whether or not to depart from Earth. What is to
be done? One more aphorism into the void…
―
Atrona Grizel
By spending years
in a place where I was neither loved nor needed, I exposed the robotic flaw
inside every ordinary person; the same people cannot be expected to behave
differently, for once someone had lodged in their minds in a certain way they
would always act in accordance with that and would not consent to a deeper
interest, so they will never annul that code and become “surprising.” In other
words, from morning until noon for years, they consistently behaved as if I
were completely invisible. They acted toward me like a piece of background
decoration; they did not know that by doing so they would become mere
background decoration to me, and even if they had known, they would have been
indifferent—lost in the whirlpool of lives filled with hundreds of people.
―
Atrona Grizel
People who are
seen as “in need of being enlightened” can never be enlightened. For if they
could be enlightened, they would already have done it for themselves long ago.
“Enlightenment” never comes from others, and cannot.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I look at
the Soviet Union—mocking the cheap, ostentatious Western way of life with their
posters—and at North Korea, which banned slang and denim in the name of
purification—I can’t help but smile. And they reciprocate. Only the three of us
know what lies beneath these smiles—inevitably three, because only we “know.”
If any witness were to intrude among us, the sacred atmosphere would be
violated—desecrated by morality and the media alike. Our smiles are meant to
occur in dark, underground spaces, not under the spotlight of foreigners.
―
Atrona Grizel
Nausea, bloating,
pain, and even bleeding should bring a certain joy, for what causes them is not
the physical trauma or the illness itself, but the body’s response—a means of
survival. These symptoms are both informants and warriors, not mere curses.
―
Atrona Grizel
An eternal winter
wouldn’t “solve” anything. Yet it would make everything more bearable.
―
Atrona Grizel
Anonymity is
freedom.
―
Atrona Grizel
What is called
“dissonance” loosens or severs the link between action and feeling. And for
that very reason, it is ideal for survival under extraordinary circumstances.
If what I did and what I felt were in harmony, I would be punished like a spy
whose outward behavior exposes his inner loyalties—because his actions betray
what he truly thinks.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even if people
appear different on the surface, they are the same at their core.
―
Atrona Grizel
In the short
term, one should be impatient, while in the long term, one should be patient.
The first is being able to say, “No,” by setting firm personal boundaries,
meaning to leave someone who doesn’t show any sign of a genuine existence right
there without dragging it out. The second is waiting. Just waiting.
―
Atrona Grizel
There are two
faces of North Korea: one where hunger, poverty, tyranny, and oppression
reign—the condemned totalitarian state; the other without the obsession with
pop trends, without the social media culture, without anime ever having leaked
in, without capitalism-centered superficial identities—the pure, secret
paradise. There exists something the outside world cannot comprehend: a place
untouched by the endless noise of consumerism, unpolluted by the global
obsession with screens, brands, and hollow performances, where the fixation on
career and “success” is rendered obsolete, and where muscular men and botoxed
women do not market their bodies. The lack of digital fashions, anime fandoms,
pornographic aesthetics, TikTok dances, or Instagram-addicted personas—this
very absence is a hidden sanctuary from modernity’s endless rush and noise. I
imagine walking through its streets, and the first thing I notice is that there
are no cars occupying every corner, no advertisements covering every scene, no
noise pollution, and no “zombies” rushing around with their heads buried in
their phones. Because there are thousands of Seouls, but there is only one
Pyongyang. Sometimes, I can’t help but feel the urge to escape there. It is not
the United States, Germany, or Australia that adorns my dreams, but North
Korea. I am so disgusted by the West—the so-called “pink utopia”—that at times
I become utterly enraptured by whatever stands radically apart from it, so much
so that I even find myself tolerating the savage aspects of those regimes and
thinking, “To preserve such purity, oppression and secrecy, may be necessary.”
And this, despite the fact that I hold no ideological loyalties—and by my very
free nature, could never truly hold any. My only admiration for Kim Il-sung is
not for some “heaven,” but for the fact that he managed to build a surreal
simulation, a private laboratory on earth as if it had descended from outer
space. Yet someone who has never listened to this nation’s songs, which all
carry piety, coolness, and proud modesty, because they have never discovered
them, will feel nothing from what I am saying; they will continue to corrupt
themselves with American rap songs full of money, sex, and cursing, trying to
mold themselves into the typical Western human type that views everything
unflinching and determined as “authoritarian.”
― Atrona Grizel