Scars may heal, but the wound itself does not.
Scars may heal, but the wound itself does not.
― Atrona Grizel
When a person abandons the desire to be understood, the mind opens more freely toward deeper terrains—because those terrains, no matter how much they are explained to others, cannot truly be understood. Accordingly, those who do not get stuck on this point, who let it pass, can become not tourists of those lands but their campers. Because everything that can be translated into social language is compelled to become domesticated, because social language is not compatible with existential language. Such people think not to be applauded, but to declare; they are solitary minds, and by virtue of that solitude, they are correspondingly immense.
― Atrona Grizel
How do I know that I am old in spirit? Because my peers, despite being the same age as I am, always appear so much “younger” to my eyes. This is not some simple comparison; it is the burden of being conscious of age itself. I know what to expect from the young. In the same way, I more or less know what kind of people the old are. And so I look at my peers the way an elderly person might look, with quiet resignation, at someone too young to possibly understand them—like gazing at a baby and enduring its noise with patience simply because it is a baby wired for noise.
― Atrona Grizel
Writers should not write incessantly; on the contrary, if they are to be able to write at all, they must deliberately restrain themselves from writing. And when the desire to write has accumulated intensely within them, they should finally release it outward in a controlled explosion—after which the fire should enter a cooling phase, waiting to erupt once more. Such writers do not produce work on a steady schedule but in bursts, and precisely for that reason they create masterpieces rather than clichés. Yet perhaps their greatest flaw lies here as well: when a writer produces brilliance without interruption, that brilliance loses its force, because it becomes ordinary. A writer must also know how to write badly on purpose from time to time, if the aim is to produce something that remains genuinely pleasurable to read.
― Atrona Grizel
In totalitarian systems, the absence of meaning is impossible, because the individual’s identity is bound to authority. In liberal systems, however, the fullness of meaning is impossible, because there are too many options, and since value is scattered in fragments across all of them, no coherent meaning can take shape. In a totalitarian regime, even if someone works in a monotonous job, the state can impose meaning upon it, making the person feel as though they are performing a sacred duty, part of something superior. In liberal regimes, however, meaning is left to the individual, and since most people simply lack the capacity to cr”eate meaning for themselves, a profession that feels boring turns into a curse—something one constantly laments. In short: totalitarian regimes are oppressive, whereas liberal regimes are empty.
― Atrona Grizel
The world of the internet is crude—excessively crude. There, every kind of filth has been normalized—whether it is profanity, cheating, or brutality—because digitality is one of the most effective ways of drifting away from one’s humanity. If I oppose anyone, I assume they will either insult me or harass me, because I have experienced this; because such a world truly exists there. It is difficult to find kind and understanding people online, for the digital realm often serves as a refuge for the lonely, an escape from their tedious lives. And so they spread their dissatisfaction onto others, returning from jobs they despise and, as if to rest, draining the energy of strangers. Yet outside, in the physical world, courteous people are far more abundant. Few dare to shout or curse easily, because they see before them not merely a profile picture and a line of text, but a living human being. There is a clear distinction between the external world and the virtual one, and neither fully reflects the other.
― Atrona Grizel
When my family does not do what I want, there is something plainly “right” about it. Because to be born into a family is, in itself, to be dependent on them. A child feeds from them. Buys things with their money. And this is a cage. Every baby is born into this cage, and it is only after adolescence that one understands it as a cage. What is called “standing on your own feet” is precisely this: recognizing the parents’ tyranny not as protection but finally as tyranny—and driving it away. Yet this, too, becomes the source of all those unnecessary cycles of struggle. Perhaps the real solution would have been for children simply not to be born to parents at all—perhaps they should have been raised in communal centers by designated individuals, but never “owned” the way one adopts a pet.
― Atrona Grizel
After remaining alone for a long time, when I begin to look at people’s faces again, I feel as if I am seeing ghouls, and I lower my gaze in fear. Thus, I see only arms and legs in motion. No heads. Because the heads carry the face of that creature, and I do not possess the baseness required to look at it directly. I am not ashamed of looking at human faces; rather, the act itself feels like a source of shame to me—as if it were something dishonorable.
― Atrona Grizel
In the modern age, a “luxurious life” does not have to mean ostentatious villas or massage parlors. It may instead mean being able to live a quiet and simple life even in the middle of a megacity—because that is a privilege granted to very few, even among the materially wealthy.
― Atrona Grizel
My father, when I once told him that certain behaviors disturbed me, suggested a “medication for obsessions,” and he truly meant it. If I am disturbed by superficial conversations, by people’s sour expressions, and by loud, hollow laughter, that is merely a sign that I am the problematic one. And, frankly, this is correct—not in the sense that I am defective, but in the sense that reacting this way is itself the deviation. He mentioned that medication sarcastically, because no such drug exists; yet he still meant it sincerely, because he knows from himself that in such a society one can live only by suspending the brain.
― Atrona Grizel
My transformation is never horizontal; it is always vertical. I am rising, yet I am not expanding. There is immense existential depth, but little social breadth. I am exalted, yes—but I am trapped within this exaltation. It resembles a skyscraper with no city around it, or a narrow, pencil-width pillar of infinite height.
― Atrona Grizel
I am conscious of every passing second. Independent of actions, emotions, and thoughts, I observe the transition of each hour. People walk. Board vehicles. Work. Speak. Laugh. I, however, watch them all from a measured distance, because while all this unfolds, I cannot ignore the time flowing past. It hurts, because all of this is clearly mere instruments of distraction. Civilization is built from top to bottom upon superfluity, and most people live not to use time, but merely to expend and exhaust it.
― Atrona Grizel
I spend the entire day waiting for the creatures around me to stop talking about hairstyles, glittering accessories, and colorful shoes, and to turn instead toward the universe—to babble and boast about galaxies and dimensions—because I cannot help it. I sense a complete absurdity in the silence that forms at the end of every shallow sentence they utter, and, with a hope that has no belief, I still expect those creatures who construct such sentences to treat that silence not as an “embarrassment” to be avoided, but as a moment worthy of thought. I wait for the end of each sentence. Before all conversations even begin, I wait for all of them to end—perhaps so that real conversations might finally start. But then they move from cars to motorcycles, then from saunas to beaches, then from pancakes to cakes. These are the obsessions of the primitive organ called the brain, bound to a biological body, with things that biochemically make it feel pleasant through signals tied to that body—that is, mechanical and unconscious animals keep celebrating, as happy captives, the things that give them pleasure simply because nature has designed them to feel that way. These purely sensory and concrete topics are discussed all day long, and all day long I wait for them not to be discussed. This is not a naive expectation, for I know very well that nothing will change; I have been living this for years already. No one will respect my perspective, because there is no one who will hear it—but that does not mean my thoughts are unworthy of respect merely because they are not respected. It is simply that such a lofty spirit has not yet met me. Yet why can I not detach myself entirely from society? Because there is a core within me reserved solely for love of humans, and it has been so suppressed that it now manifests itself in a distorted form, as an obsession with humanity. Tomorrow, again, I will expect talk of hair, accessories, cars, cakes, and shoes to be discarded in favor of discussions of art, science, and philosophy. And then again—knowing it will not happen, perhaps until I die. Because if this ancient desire were to end, the fire within me would be extinguished.
― Atrona Grizel
I can endure any kind of suffering—loneliness, exclusion, physical violence, or psychological torment. But I cannot endure ignorance, and this is what pains me most, because it is also the shallowest form of suffering among them. I would lose my mind not in solitary confinement, but in the land of monkeys—and the country I was born into seems like a heaven for that.
― Atrona Grizel
Among people, the degree to which one suppresses oneself is directly proportional to the breadth of one’s inner world, because most people cannot restrain what is already too small to overflow.
― Atrona Grizel
Those who live a prison-like life—whether in the literal sense, confined within a cell, or in the abstract sense, imprisoned by routine and monotony—share something with farmers and peasants: a simple life. Just as the happiness of farmers and peasants may consist merely in having their stomachs full that day, in not being greedy, and in being able to feel content despite fatigue through warm human bonds, so too a person living in such a prison is reduced to a similar condition and begins to take pleasure in mere existence. Freedom intensifies desire, yet the impoverished strata of people are not free. Nor are they wise, for precisely because they lack resources and time, they rarely find the opportunity to read and think. What renders them so calm is the narrowness of their imagination—and, for the same reason, their simple acceptance of that narrowness as it is. Modern people trapped in a boring cycle are similar, but with one difference: in their case, it is not the narrowness of imagination but, at most, the narrowness of desire. That is, they know the possibilities, yet they simply cease to want them, because they become focused solely on survival and come to desire nothing else, even if they are still capable of thinking of them.
― Atrona Grizel