The most independent person is the least respectful.
The most independent person is the least respectful.
―
Atrona Grizel
The enemy
advances to wear down.
The front is under fire once again.
Every day, without pause, it is under siege.
The ghost unit
guarding this territory—seen nowhere else.
It has found no chance to move, stuck where it is.
And in the middle of this swamp, it has raised a tower of resilience.
The enemy
withdraws, inevitably.
The defenders begin to wait for the next day, for the next raid.
They attack by defending.
Again, the tower
is bombarded from morning till night.
Again, the same sight: standing tall, unshaken.
This is the victory of defeat.
―
Atrona Grizel
If the self is
independent, this usually leads to conflict with the body, because the body
will always remain dependent. You may have a will of steel, yet you still
cannot endure extreme cold or months of starvation, because the body, as a
biological organism, remains dependent on biology. While the self is
metaphysical, the body being imprisoned in physicality in this way grants the
person a rupture that makes actions such as death fasting possible, because the
body is no longer even adopted as the person’s self. It is merely a cage,
dependent on external factors such as hunger, cold, illness, aging, and death.
The most absolute freedom of the self comes through the negation of this cage,
which generally results in bodily death, but abstractly in liberation.
― Atrona Grizel
A slap delivered
to me does not necessarily entail the “loss of my honor,” because if the
concept of “honor” is something fragile, dependent on social scripts and
values, then it was dishonorable from the outset. But if its source is
internal—and therefore an honor independent of the social world—then, in that
case, whether that person is stripped naked, forced into ridiculous acts,
ruthlessly beaten, or subjected to slaps, they never lose their honor, because
society cannot dethrone a king it did not declare. They have already exited the
arena of society; they are their own hero, and society cannot strip someone of
heroism who was never its hero in the first place, merely because of a
gibberish act like flesh striking flesh.
―
Atrona Grizel
I cannot recall a
single moment of being genuinely listened to. In an entire lifetime, zero. I
have never truly had a real conversation with anyone, because no such real
person ever existed, and so I believe the existence of such a listener is
impossible. And so, when someone asks me, “Has nobody ever listened to you?” my
answer isn’t “No,” but rather, “Is that even possible?”
―
Atrona Grizel
Seeing so many
spiritually worthless creatures kept alive at the expense of food, water,
clothing, and shelter for literally nothing only makes my insides ache; I cry
in place of nature. The way to save the planet is not to reduce the consumption
of resources, but to reduce those who consume them.
―
Atrona Grizel
Ignorance, when
it is well-intentioned, is rarely “ignorance” at all; a person who does not
concern themselves with the smallest detail I spend nights obsessing over,
simply because they have already embraced it as given, carries a childlike
innocence. Not laziness, not denial; something closer to acceptance without
interrogation. When I go to the market, all of this passes through my mind at
once: whether something will happen to me when I step outside; whether people
will detect a “general strangeness” in me as I walk; whether entering the
market means betraying my own sense of independence by acknowledging its
existence; which aisle I should turn toward; which products I will buy; why
those products are placed here rather than elsewhere; why they are packaged in
this particular way; who designed those packages; who physically produced them;
who transported them here; who stocked them on this shelf, and what kind of
life that person lives; whether they are happy in this work; whether they ever
imagine that someone like me might exist, someone who will think entire worlds
into a product they placed carelessly and then forgot; whether I should thank
the cashier or not; whether thanking them would make me appear more natural and
therefore less strange, or whether not thanking them would allow me to leave
more abstractly and forget; and whether, once outside, I will feel humiliated
carrying these items in my hands, as if I am obligated to sustain a miserable
being like myself. All of this may be unnecessary, yes, but for my mind it is
compulsive. A person with childlike ignorance simply goes outside, enters the
market, completes the task, and returns home without wondering why the market
is there, why it bears that name, or why the product exists in that form and in
that package. They see the market and enter; they see the product and buy it;
and that is all. This is not only about the market, of course; they also go to
school, go on vacation, fall in love, plan dinners, watch television, play
video games, and question none of these while doing so. At times, I find myself
feeling a deep empathy for this, because they resemble children, in a good
sense. A child comes up to me, opens a comic book, and starts reading it cheerfully.
They do not question who wrote the comic, why it contains those images, who
drew them, who printed the book, and so on. A child thinks simply and
innocently, and that is what makes me utterly emotional. In fact, an entire
society can be likened to such children. While I often sense a kind of
mechanical quality in this, I also sense something tender, almost affectionate,
and this is what makes me cry. Even stupidity has a certain sanctity in itself.
Nostalgia for simplicity? No. A labyrinthine soul’s cold reverence for
pre-conscious purity, long since forgotten.
―
Atrona Grizel
Even saying
“nothing is important” is important, because it expresses an inner world. What
leads a person to say it is the reality of their own universe, and that is
sacred. It matters if nothing matters.
―
Atrona Grizel
The only noise I
can make is the silence I carry like a shadow to every place I go.
―
Atrona Grizel
When I realized
that the relationships formed in formal settings—such as at school or the
workplace—were fundamentally created merely to ease the stifling atmosphere of
those environments, serving not as centers of thought but as mere decorations
alongside exams and papers, I began to avoid all the connections that
bureaucracy offered me.
―
Atrona Grizel
I am the sun
glowing within ice: reserved, cold, and emotionless in public; talkative,
happy, and playful in private. Since warmth is mistaken for weakness, openness
punished by ridicule, and vulnerability turned into gossip, it’s not hypocrisy
but survival; authenticity must be rationed and directed, not scattered and
distributed.
―
Atrona Grizel
Saying “I cannot
waste my time on this” ignores the fact that, from a cosmic perspective, time
is necessarily nothing but a form of waste.
―
Atrona Grizel
If, out of
nowhere, I were to lift my camouflage and shout, “I am more tired than
anything,” I knew they would not ask whether this came from a lack of humane
needs or as an inevitable symptom of the system’s rotten nature; instead, they
would ask, “What’s his problem that he’s so tired?” and they would offer only
things that advise me to “keep performing my function”—because they have never
experienced anything like it, for they are “normal,” and because I do not
resemble them, they will try to “correct” me. And even if they they won’t try
to “fix” me, this inaction is almost always deliberate. That is, deep inside
they always see me as “flawed,” but they just don’t reflect it outwardly. In
short, I don’t believe people can listen to me—whether internally or
externally—without judgment. For I knew that if I suddenly discharged the sewer
inside me, it would only lead to being treated as mad. Thus began the long retreat
inward.
―
Atrona Grizel
In school, when
the teacher enters the classroom and the students stand up, this is not respect
but conditioning as a result of indoctrination. The resemblance of this very
scene to that of German schoolchildren once raising their arms in the Hitler
salute when the teacher came to the class, this shared characteristic between
the two, is strikingly remarkable.
―
Atrona Grizel
It is not that
the police drive away the “disturbers of peace” and restore order; rather, by
punishing the outliers who present a kind of unrest different from what the
system provides, they protect not the madness of the individual but the madness
of society itself.
―
Atrona Grizel
The only thing I
forgot is how to forget.
―
Atrona Grizel
The only
meaningless thing is the search for meaning.
―
Atrona Grizel
What I need are
not those who dance this way and that in the middle of the bridge, but those
who have burnt that bridge down entirely.
―
Atrona Grizel
I do not like old
age. Nor do I like youth. But the only reason I like the latter a little more
is that the possibility of change still exists. Someone who has spent decades
in the world cannot be reshaped, because they are already stuck in habit. A
person who has only spent about ten years, however, is like dough that can be
kneaded and formed as desired.
―
Atrona Grizel
Y: “How do you
define yourself?”
X: “I do not
define myself.”
Y: “But you are
obliged to give a definition.”
X: “Undefinable.”
Y: “Why?”
X: “I am distant
from reasons.”
Y: “But you are
obliged to give a reason.”
X:
“Reasonlessness.”
―
Atrona Grizel
Absolute peace
and happiness would be unbearable for me. For to remain vigorous I must always
be prodded; there must always be things that disturb me. I could flee society
and live in the forest. But for what? My mind did not evolve to lead a calm,
unhurried life in the forest, but to possess an inner cathedral despite being
trapped in the streets. I do not love heaven in any way, because I was designed
to survive in hell. Were I in heaven, the two heavens—inside me and
outside—would be too suffocating. A war machine—the mind—is useless and
unnecessary in times of peace—the heaven—after all.
―
Atrona Grizel
A white light
seeped through the bars.
It was calling heaven inside.
Without a thought, he hurled himself into paradise.
But the light flung him back into the darkness.
Then another
light appeared in the corner.
The moment he drew near, the room grew darker.
It vanished, but then appeared again.
It went away, but came back again.
Was this a trick of hope?
Was this a hopeless game?
Offended, he sank
to the ground.
He no longer wished to pursue the white.
At that moment, the lights went still.
The black had witnessed it all.
The light had
fled from him.
But the darkness remained beside him.
He felt ashamed of his flirtation with the light.
He married the dark that night.
Now his eyes saw
everything—
more than even the light could ever reveal.
―
Atrona Grizel
You’re not
homeless, you don’t worry about going hungry, you’re not cold, the future
doesn’t concern you, you don’t have to prove anything, no heavy expectations
are placed on you, no one cares what you do, no one interferes with when you go
to bed and when you get up, you have nothing to lose, and so on—I would be
freer in prison than “free” outside.
― Atrona Grizel