The single-sentence refutation of the saying “a person is what they do” is this: feelings and actions are not the same.
The single-sentence refutation of the saying “a person is what they do” is this: feelings and actions are not the same.
―
Atrona Grizel
The eye that is
capable of seeing, sees. Trying to describe the image to the blind is futile.
―
Atrona Grizel
I carry an
expectation that expects nothing: each morning I wake with the feeling that
entirely new things will happen, even though time has taught me the hard way
that nothing and no one ever comes—and never will.
―
Atrona Grizel
When night falls,
after a day that has passed in noise, I think about how my family sleeps in
their beds like animals. They must be waiting to wake up in the morning. They
will get out of bed and repeat exactly the same things for yet another day:
going to the market, cooking, then moving to the couch and watching television
until they go to bed. They know nothing else but to say, “Come watch films with
us.” They love noise, because noise makes them forget thinking. That’s how they
were raised. This is all their lives consist of. If you try to oppose them,
they already have pre-prepared views that justify themselves, and they will do
nothing but repeat those views, because being able to sustain such a life in
this way for an entire lifetime requires a rigid and narrow mind. It is
impossible to change adults who have lived this way for decades. If they are 50
now, I can already foresee what they will be like at 80, because even if 30
years pass, nothing changes. Does time even move forward? Why do they wake up
at all? Sometimes, when they are asleep at night, I feel like keeping them from
waking up, just to have a little peace of mind, because I have been living the
same day for years—and for absolutely nothing. Two mad person can tolerate each
other, but a genius thrown between them will be spiritually retired while still
young.
―
Atrona Grizel
Although I hadn’t
even left childhood behind yet, I felt a desire to start life over again
because I was afraid of death, and that’s why I had intentionally detached myself
from life—because if I attached myself to it, the thought of death would grow
in my mind. In other words, I could live life only by disconnecting from it.
There were times when I wanted my consciousness to be transferred to a device
and my body to be “given to the dogs,” and I was serious about these thoughts
because being in a human body only reminded me that I was mortal with every
passing second. It wasn’t some simple “fear of death” that pushed me toward
transhumanism, but the fact that I see a mind like mine, unprecedented in
history and alien, as a museum treasure that must be preserved. Knowing that
other minds in history, different and original, outside both their eras and
their societies, have died hurts me inside. I wish they could have been preserved
like specimens in capsules in a laboratory even for nothing, even if they just
sat there in a corner, but still existed.
―
Atrona Grizel
Solitude is made
heavy not by its presence, but by the scarcity—or absence—of things that can
make one forget it, even momentarily. Those who do not feel this weariness are
not less alone; they have simply become blind to their loneliness. Because it
cannot be erased; it can only be buried. After all, one is born alone and
inevitably dies alone. Others begin to seem like mere distant companions when
compared to the isolation of one’s own mind.
―
Atrona Grizel
The anger inside
me never showed on the outside, and this didn’t lead to my fragmentation but to
my calcification. After all, this abundance of anger was an infinite fuel. If
someone looked down on me, my fury kept me from feeling belittled. If a
situation arose that could condemn me, my pride always destroyed any chance of
it turning into self-hatred. Even if my life had driven me to the brink of
suicide, I kept on living—or at least existing—just to let the void know that I
was still here, if only for the sake of it. And I couldn’t resist this
obsessive feeling. It was closer to steadfast stubbornness than to defiance,
for the latter still implies a belief in some kind of victory, while the former
signifies a refusal to internalize collapse even when defeat is absolute—which
is perhaps the sole real victory. It is the moment when an ancient emotion
ceases to concern itself with outward expression and instead becomes a servant
of the inner state—the most uncompromising boycotter of the outer world that
brought it into being.
―
Atrona Grizel
The more time I
spend with humans, the more debased I feel. Their dullness wearies my mind;
their predictability suffocates my thoughts. Even just existing among them
without doing anything fills me with a sense of being dragged downward. For
even suffering ought to possess a kind of nobility—a glimmer of aesthetics, a
silhouette of philosophy. But those beings carry nothing. In their presence, I
feel my essence erode, thinned by the noise of their shallowness. And so I
ascend again—away from them, into the skies, beyond the stars, to the limits of
the vast universe. There, I begin to mend. I recover pieces of myself long
scattered in their midst, and in that sacred solitude, I revere the version of
me that they made me forget.
―
Atrona Grizel
A scene plays in
my mind: in childhood, perhaps ten years ago, during an art class, the teacher
looked at my drawing and said, “But you didn’t color the ground. Are the trees
flying in the air?” Only now do I have the chance to reply: “You do not tell me
how to draw. You have zero authority to chain me.” To guess what kind of person
she was, that single “but” she used was more than enough. But my child mind had
already grown used to seeing her as a teacher, that is, an authority. If
children must be taught anything at all, it should be this: never learn what
others try to teach you.
―
Atrona Grizel
As long as I have
food, water, and shelter, I suppose I can endure anything. That is, neither
disrespect, lovelessness, nor loneliness can affect me too deeply. These feel
like mere noise compared to the survival of the body. Because as long as the
body survives, anything is possible, and no matter how severe emotional pain
may be, it will lead to nothing. Nothing will occur, for a person’s basic needs
are guaranteed, and thus, it is sure they will continue to exist. So how, then,
could such abstract things ever destroy me?
―
Atrona Grizel
Argument does not
interest me, because I am not something that expects to be listened to, nor
something that needs approval, nor something that desires to prove itself. If I
am forced to engage, what I do will always be to reinforce myself rather than
to conduct an “exchange of ideas.” I do not bother to refute the other
verbally, because in my reality they are all rotten at the root already. For
someone who argues with an enemy, the enemy is something that exists. But there
is never anyone standing opposite me, so no word comes from my mouth.
―
Atrona Grizel
After a sleepless
night, I realize my consciousness has lightened. It’s as if I begin to glide
within a mist, in a distant dream. Not sleep, nor wakefulness—the opposite of
being, an endless floating. Time blurs. Space becomes abstract. The body is
abandoned. Confinement is no more. Humans begin to seem like mechanic figures,
and the world becomes surreal. This is the only sensation in which I feel
absolutely clear and free, for I no longer carry existence upon me. And yes, I
abuse this sensation—a free drug. Sleeplessness might be one of the experiences
closest to living without consciousness.
―
Atrona Grizel
She thrashes and
flails.
This is her first
swim.
So she does not
know how to.
No one reaches
out.
She does not
expect anyone to, anyway.
Silently, she
sinks to the bottom.
After a while,
she lets go.
Her lungs fill
with water.
But when the soul
has already drowned,
who cares about
the flesh?
―
Atrona Grizel
Sometimes, when I
look at people’s faces, instead of perceiving a face, I see an organism
composed of eyebrows, eyes, nose, and mouth—each existing solely for function.
Eyebrows prevent sweat from reaching the eyes. The eyes are two flesh spheres
through which the organism perceives the outside world. The nose enables
breathing. The mouth serves nourishment. And so on. If seen through such a
purely biological lens, no “face” ever forms.
―
Atrona Grizel
I try not to look
at anyone’s face as much as possible, so they don’t occupy my mind. If there is
no face, there is no presence. Naturally, if I saw the people I’ve been
surrounded by for years somewhere else, I wouldn’t recognize them, because I’ve
never actually looked at their faces.
―
Atrona Grizel
Nothing that
society can comprehend is real.
― Atrona Grizel