paper (emphera) → short-lived whatever (empheral) → mayflies (Empheroptera)
Mayflies
Live under water for a year
Grow wings
Become airborne
Have as much sex as possible for a few hours
Die
The metaphor is obvious, of this I am aware.
At lunch at The Celebrity Delly, I pocketed our receipt as a piece of essential “ephemera.” “Ephemera?” he raised his eyebrows. “I only know it as an adjective,” then did a bit of biologist’s hotdoggin’, mentioning mayflies, noting that their order is Empheroptera from the Greek ephemeros (“short-lived”) and pteron (“wing”).
You gotta mine those strip malls while you are alive and well. There is a rich vein in those non-hills, flat as tracts in Sacramento. The corned beef hillocks, on the other hand – or in both hands – stack tall and juicy.
Mark seems to be sliding off the deck of the Titanic with the imminent demise of sandwiches, plates, utensils and beverages crashing onto the floor, splashing onto the walls and bringing our lunch to a wallop of a halt. Grab hold of that feast while it is in reach and you’ve got the verve of desire.
When one has a lunch encounter with a biologist, the mayfly is typical conversational fodder. Whup whup! You gotta live it while you got it. Birth, transformation, lunch, transcendence, death.
The Celebrity Delly just goes to showya that riches are in your own backyard. Been by it a million times on my way to my favorite knit shop, but never felt the urge to go in. It looks like, honestly, not much from the outside. Just goes to showya, it pays to look deep, not just than wide. Mine that vein.
The Lunch Encounter 
Is there a back room at the Celebrity Delly (“Delly”?) for the “have as much sex as possible” part of the ephemeral life? Perhaps celebs like Charlie Sheen have a private booth there? They can call it the Mayfly Room and those in the know would know…
They might need a van out back cause the place is in a shallow building. The van could have two bumper stickers on its rear bumper. On the right side, “If this van’s a rocking, don’t come a’knockin'”, and on the left side, ” Don’t laugh, it might be your daughter in here'”. I had a boss once who had those two exact bumper stickers on HIS van. Oh boy. He was quite the Mayfly. Living it up as much as possible – making his life as ephemeral as possible.