Ona Dobratz
The Runner
By ONA DOBRATZ
I am listening to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. I have
seen the movie “Clockwork Orange,” so I must think of
violences—how they exist in my life, how I deal with them.
We are running along the track. Ray turns to me: “It’s
difficult to explain. I am working hard. It is painful but at the
same time it gives me pleasure. It sounds contradictory. It’s
difficult to explain.”
No, I think. There is in us that seeks the violent, and that
seeks the beautiful. We want fast movement, hard, certain
contact and we want Beethoven: flow, blend, harmony,
grace. Alex is not so strange a hero then; only a man with his
desires in separate fists.
Is it confusing? What I want is to talk about sports. I am
trying to clear away, to work forward into some statement
about sports that will get through all the irrational prejudices
that have grown for years, through all the undiscerned
stereotypes that have been built around the athletic woman—
the woman who, ideally, has come to a joyful and harmonious
blend of the desire for the beautiful and the desire for a
violence: motion, bursting out, strength and physical
freedom.
A woman: I laugh, cry, joke, hurt, am hurt. I have sexual
frustrations, I’m lonely, I’m pretty, I’m ugly, I love, hate,
seek refuges; I want understanding. I use my body, love its
actions: skipping, bounding, throwing, dancing. Me moving
through space, directing myself. In this realm of movement I
have an opportunity to be intensely, to live more than a half
felt life, to know joy as well as pain: sometimes I even have a
difficult time knowing which is which. I jump, run, twist,
turn, throw, catch, hit, lunge!
This is the idea: Inside us there are the dozens of things. I
feel my insides churning with love, hate, gentleness, lust,
violence and despair. I want to shout. I want to do something
about all of this! I cannot bear the uncertainty. I want to
know what is happening, what it is I am feeling, how to bring
it up face to face and grasp it—to either throw away or to
keep within reach.
Clockwork Orange. Violence. But it’s too one-sided; too
much off center, as though it stood up and tipped over. And
when Ray said to me “It is painful but at the same time it
gives me pleasure.” and I listened to the 9th over and over, I
understood much more of Clockwork Orange, much more of
myself.
I am violent. I am beautiful. I need to express: to yell and
rend, hit, kick, fight—to sing, laugh, flow and I decide now
that the need will not manifest itself destructively, it will be
confined and blended with what is beautiful. It will be sport,
and I will call it games and learn to love without hurting, set
mj hatred and frustration apart to a certain place and yes,
even make them beautiful; a runner, a swimmer, a jumper,
a hitter. I understand I am human: I can learn to make
beautiful. I am human, a woman. Amazing!
W V
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