Running through (and past) memory

Zagreb, Croatia - Ugresic's hometown, 15 years after civil war engulfed it

In the city the fitness center is my healing temple, the price of soothing cheap.
~ Dubravka Ugresic

At Blaze, we spend a lot of time talking about running. Usually we discuss how awesome it is. There are so many benefits to the practice - cardiovascular fitness, mental clarity, a cheap means of transport. But with this powerful line, Dubravka Ugresic (pronounced OOO-gre-zhich) reminds us that running, and sport, is also a means of healing.

Ugresic is a writer from the former Yugoslavia. I write "former Yugoslavia" and not Croatia because many of her musings - both fiction and non - address what it means to be a citizen of a country that no longer exists. During the 1990s not only was her homeland wiped off the map, but it was annihilated in a gulf of civil war and self destruction. The Balkan War left thousands homeless, orphaned, and without nationality. As Ugresic's writings remind us, one cannot understand the importance of these kinds of things until we lose them. And make no mistake - we cannot understand what it is like to be forcibly stripped from them, and to live life without them, until it happens to us.

When that happens, what do we do?

Ugresic's line about the fitness center comes at the end of her novel "The Museum of Unconditional Surrender", and it does not refer to one of those great inspiring, or even soothing, workouts. The image she gives us is instead of a line of ladies plodding away on the treadmill. One-two-one-two go their steps, she writes. One-two-one-two the beat of their hearts, pounding with their plodding lives.

But sometimes, the best way to work through an emotional trauma is to start by working it out of one's system. Walking away from such a horrific past, and walking towards a new life, is always an arduous process, is one which we cannot even begin to understand (nor claim we do). But in a step, in a breath, in a heartbeat is affirmation. Is life. If we can still move our legs, if we can still move our arms, then there is always a chance that we can still move our minds and still move our hearts. We can still move on.

Today Ugresic's Zagreb is a bustling metropolis full of cafes, shops, and life. As are many of the Balkan cities she writes about. In less than two weeks, you will be able to read all about the best places to run in these places. Zagreb, Dubrovnik, Sarajevo, Belgrade. Where once there was loss there has been regained life. And when you run, you celebrate that.