Masculinity, muscle, pain, muscle pain, the fighting body, the crying body, the damaged body, the body as malleable, the body as controllable, damage as control, the locker room, the ecstasy of exertion, quick and slow agony, duality, the love and hate for flesh, safety in danger, freedom in destruction...
Microtrauma, which is tiny damage to the fibers, may play a significant role in muscle growth. When microtrauma occurs (from weight training or other strenuous activities), the body responds by overcompensating, replacing the damaged tissue and adding more, so that the risk of repeat damage is reduced. Damage to these fibers has been theorized as the possible cause for the symptoms of delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), and is why progressive overload is essential to continued improvement, as the body adapts and becomes more resistant to stress.
"(...)we can approach and understand the body from many angles and can take other perspectives into account, perspectives that view the(...)body from both a subjective position and an abject view and consider the living body to be much more than a collection of positivistic statistical data – rather it is the holistic outcome of the impacts of powerful forces."
The Body in Pain and Pleasure: An Ethnography of Mixed Martial Arts
Magnus Stenius, Umeå University, 2015
I've got a lot of problems with derealization, like not knowing if things are real or not. But I never feel that when I am working out. Because it's like, this fucking hurts, it has to be for real.
I know one motherfucking thing once you do it
you know once you commit
you know you out of here
once you once you take the fucking leap
and yes suicide
suicide is the fucking option for everybody
if you ever get tired of it man there's not too..
it's not too late to quit
you
you can always quit
if you get too tired of this shit you can always quit
but just
but
but when you commit
then you know what I mean
that's it
once that motherfucker is back and it's coming
there ain’t no looking back
(Scarface interviewed on Vladtv.com, 2018)
Hemlock (conium maculatum in Latin, odört in Swedish) is a native plant of central Europe and North Africa, but can also be found in North America. Hemlock can become extremely poisonous depending on the circumstances it grows in (plants that have grown in cold and dark surroundings are typically more poisonous). The poison affects the central nervous system, causing full paralysis including of the respiratory organs, and subsequent death of asphyxiation. Hemlock and wolfsbane (Aconitum napellus or stormhatt) were commonly used in antiquity for lethal poisoning. Wolfsbane, whose symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting, was given to common criminals whereas the hemlock poison (usually mixed with opium) was used for cases when death was meant to be calmer and more pleasant – convicted members of the elite classes, as well as those who wished to end their life voluntarily. The most famous case of death by hemlock poisoning is the philosopher Socrates, who was convicted of impiety and corrupting the youth and given the choice of poison or exile.
Above: Hemlock token (tin, plaster)
I will try to argue that living as suicidal may mean nothing else but staying young. The coercion to live, set upon us by the pro-life society, is all the more unpleasant as life is not an object (as the metaphor of the "gift" granted by God suggests), but rather a process: the continuous transformation of our persons from young into old and finally dead. Once we are born, we are condemned to become old, and nobody ever asks us whether we want this becoming or not. We (...) are not comfortable about being forced to undergo the transformation from young into old, for which we never asked.
-Living as a Suicidal, Carthago deleta, alt.suicide.holiday
Life is a lower form of matter
a sub-element
I was an old carved up tree
who didn't eat
didn't drink
didn't breathe
but whole snot-feces and jissom-
diarrhea brotherhoods
insinuated themselves in me
enveloping my last filament
and setting up for themselves a sub-elemental
cesspool life
a perjured double of life
which they attempted to animate in lieu of my own
which they were ignorant of
and remain ignorant as ever of its
true movement
pulse and trajectory
the element of true duration
- Antonin Artaud
