TAF: Consumption
- Various Authors
- Feb 9, 2017
- 4 min read
On Thursday the 9th of February as Trinity Arts Festival drew to a close after a full week of all things arty; The Renegade Rant and Rave held a creative writing workshop aimed at anyone who fancied writing, but didn't always seem to get things finished! By the end of the workshop, everyone had written a 'Short attention span' centered around the theme of 'Consumption'. Our promise was that these written pieces would not be edited by us and would all be featured online and in our print issue.
Thanks very much to everyone who came and contributed some lovely words: Georgie Emery, Niamh Donnelly, Jenna Lewis, Annabel O' Roule, Brian O'Flynn, Eve Mc Donnell and our Anonymous contributors (!)
Consumption-Georgie Emery
“Would you like a 10p bag?”
He looks pointedly at the pile of shopping accumulating by the cash register, before looking at the cashier, face stony and eyes pinched into a squint. He returns his gaze to the shopping. A woman with a baby on her hip sighs.
He walks out of the shop, baguette sticking precariously out of his pocket, the tie from his bag of apples cutting into the flesh of his palm. But at least he saved himself from wasting more plastic. Lord knows the world needs more thoughtful people.
The baguette falls out of his pocket as he runs to catch the green man. As he crosses the threshold to his house, the apple bag slips from his hand and they land on the floor with a thudthudthud.
He curses under his breath, but his feeling of virtuousness endures.
Consumption-Anon
“Where are you” he texted, “it’s nearly half ten”, my friends roll their eyes that he’s asked yet again, “I’m out, having drinks, I’ll be back in a bit.”
Hoping he accepts that, and doesn’t have a fit.
He wants me home, in his arms, not out here in the cold,
That’s what I tell myself, knowing well I’m too old
To be patrolled and controlled like a bold little child,
Is this what love’s meant to feel like, constantly being on trial?
“That muffin was 600 calories,” she claims, plucking the final crumb from the table, ensuring each morsel was counted in the number associated with the eaten good. The other looked on and listened, jealousey souring the taste of her 100 calorie carrot piece. Consumed by the words and numeric sin, neither girl knowing how the other stayed so thin.
“Shadow Time”-Niamh Donnelly
That feeling of not quite living fully in one realm of time, or another. We explain ourselves in terms of a historical time: spanning generations of written understandings of this world. The kind of human time that we can easily relate to. Yet, now aware of geological time, a frame of mind we must now begin to consider. The transition of epochs; ecosystems; the entirety of species, ever depleting.
This manner of being is more difficult to translate into our everyday existence: cowardice, cognitive dissonance, carefree consumption.
We continue. An uneasy feeling in the pits of our stomachs.
Consumption- Anonymous
“River Rock purer than you” said the fat man in the high chair, gesturing with both hands in delight. The committee members clapped and applauded delighted, as if he had just come up with the greatest idea ever.
“Excellent boss” said some, “amazing work” said others. The name was clever and the bottle looked nice.
“So” continued the boss, rubbing his hands together eagerly, “we just run it through the usual drill, yes?”
“Twelve stages of purification” he grinned. The committee members laughed, too intoxicated by the promise of a rich reward to care about the results.
Consumption-Eve Mc Donnell
Post-mortem
13.
When I said I’d give you everything you weren’t meant to take it.
Lifespan
22.
Early on a Tuesday with her eyes still closed
She said that geniuses
Die young
Because words eat away
At your soul.
The Internet’s Common Sense
14.
‘Don’t feed the troll’ is good advice until it’s camped out on your doorstep.
Rocket Science
44.
The best advice I was ever given came from nowhere.
She said “Let kindness consume you. If it doesn’t, force it”
And every day I watched her try to do just that.
It would seem that it is harder than lollipops and glam rock.
Consumption-Brian O' Flynn
The orange screen blazed an
accusatory glow over his ridged
features—a police spotlight, pointing out a crime.
He was consumed, by a need to
Collect, to amass human trophies
like Jeffrey Datmer collecting
male genitalia in jars on shelves
in his dark apartment.
I turn over the dismembered
bodies and all the faces are mine.
I wake up, another orange glow
bathing my features—this time the
morning sun, for a second I have
forgotten. Then the emptiness floods
back in with all the crushing gravity
of a vacuum. My black hole
sucking the light back out the window,
consuming myself.
“How come he’s the one
to let me down?
How come they glow different in the evening?”
Consumption-Annabel O' Roule
More. Always more.
What am I filling in for?
Space. Loneliness. Am I happy? Are you?
Filling time. Wasting time.
A life worth living.
Worth. Is that all we care?
A value fixed to what we own, not what we are.
What about them? The other people. The people without.
If we base our lives on consumption.
What’s left for them?
How do they define themselves? These products of capitalism.
Capital, the great dictator.
Choosing who wins before they even have a chance.
They say it’s about who we are. How hard we work.
So why? Why money? Why me? Why you? Why not?
A life without consumption.
But what else have we got?
Milk-Jenna Lewis
Mam said we only needed milk and something for my tea. We picked up bananas as well, ‘handy for your brothers football practice’. Next we grabbed some ‘always good to have in the freezer’ bread, then on to the ‘buy one get one free’ beans. Snatched up some Jaffa cakes too! Half off! Pizzas for tea: Pineapple, mushroom, pepperoni or cheese. ‘Cheese please, no! Pineapple… no, cheese, definitely cheese.’ I balanced it on the two bottles of pop (‘good for when your cousins come.’) Shampoo, two for a pound, ‘your sister will be pleased’. Ma picked up a glossy magazine: Ten Bargains for your summer wardrobe. Ten pence a plastic bag, that’s another pound, and out to the car.
We never did get the milk.
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