Consumption

I had one of those bizarre memories that pop out from the mist of distant past while in the zen of collating pages to these books. When I was a very young kid, the elders in my world, would occasionally talk about someone and a disease called 'Consumption" in the same conversation. It was such a strange word, I imagined people being swallowed up like quicksand, only a hand is visible, then gone. I had to look up what it was. Well, as it turns out, Tuberculosis, aka Consumption, is a type of bacterial infection, that until the late 19th and early 20th C had no cure until the invention of antibiotics. It 'consumed' whole populations and is still a disease afflicting and even killing people all over the world, including the US.

I can't help but feel a connection between Consumption, as a word (noun) and a disease (verb) to that of consumerism. I am not making judgement on it, but making an observation, that in the process of consuming everything we want or see in our culture, we can become ill at ease (dis-ease) with the nature of who we are, literally and metaphorically......