Ephemera

           

This week's offering consists of a photo, a list of words... do what you want with them! 
There's still space in the Birdland Spring Writers Retreat on April 21. Be sure to sign up before  March 31!

Derived from a Greek word meaning things lasting no more than a day,  ephemera refers to printed and written materials such as postcards, letters, tickets, magazines. Ephemeral ponds last for part of the year; and ephemeral creatures that breed there have a life cycle that completes itself in less than a year. But it’s all relative. How can a postcard endure? How can a prairie be ephemeral? A mountain? The earth?

I took this photo of a closed up store that once sold ephemera in a small town in west central Illinois in 2010. Closed up, all the ephemera moved out, the shop itself was ephemeral. Who knows what it is now?

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Here’s a list of synonyms for ephemeral:

momentary, passing, brief, episodic, evanescent, fleeting, flitting, fugacious, fugitive, impermanent, short, short-lived, temporary, transient, transitory, unenduring, volatile

And some antonyms: enduring, eternal, everlasting, interminable, lasting, long, permanent, perpetual

Exercise: Write about what’s ephemeral in your life. Write about what’s enduring.