Ephemeral

Ephemeral... a pretty word, and poetic. I've always thought it so, and certainly the theme of ephemeral life pervades literature and poetry. Life is ephemeral, it endures for a day only, as it seems. It is fleeting, it is transitory. And yet, in this fleeting, transitory life we human beings can amass a great quantity of ephemera. For, ephemera is what antique-ophiles have taken to calling vintage paper. Old advertising graphics, quaint old Christmas seals, menus from a restaurant that closed in 1905... anything that has acquired enough of a yellowing of age, or has become a generation removed from the day that it was relevant as "news"; anything that has acquired the coveted "vintage" status; that which is "retro," that yesterday we just called old, and threw it out; anything that became unappreciated, neglected, covered with dust and cobwebs; anything that survived in the back corner of the closet, to be rediscovered as a curiosity and called quaint, or funny, or peculiar... these are the ephemera that today's children can appreciate and love in a whole new way. My own soul is drowning in ephemera, but most of it is of the current kind, not yet grown quaint or curious. Right now, it's only dusty. Paper, it seems, has taken over my life. It is due for a much needed sweeping out... On this task, I have begun, and Spring not even started. Yet, I have a feeling that, months and days being ephemeral, as all else, spring will catch me at my task and come and go; perhaps finding my life a little less cluttered. I hope.

Wikipedia on ephemera...