Runs

March 22 2016

It runs in the family.

Like hot pursuit

trying not to fall.

Like gunk

slammed against the wall.

Like cheap nylon hose

unravelling,

ripped, torn, snagged.

Direction set

by the warp and weft

beneath its silky sheen,

the straight line of descent

your eye and hand follow.

As pre-determined

as family, the accident of birth.

As blood, and belonging

clan, and tribe.

You run like hell

to find yourself

running for your life.

But the line is cast, you’re reeled back

can’t escape your kind.

The terrific writer (and medical oncologist/haematologist) Siddhartha Mukherjee had a piece in the recent New Yorker (March 28, 2016) about his family history of mental illness, and about the nascent research into the genetics and possible mechanism of schizophrenia.

When I put the piece down, its title – Runs In The Family – stuck with me. It has a certain inevitability to it:  a connotation of destiny and fate. It contradicts our conceit of agency, and personal autonomy. And yet it has the disarming simplicity and familiarity of cliché.

It left me with the urge to noodle around with the word “run”. This is what came of it.