A friend came to visit James Joyce one day and found the great man sprawled across his writing desk in a posture of utter despair.
'James, what’s wrong?' the friend asked. 'Is it the work?'
Joyce indicated assent without even raising his head to look at his friend. Of course it was the work; isn’t it always?
'How many words did you get today?' the friend pursued.
Joyce (still in despair, still sprawled facedown on his desk): 'Seven.'
'Seven? But James… that’s good, at least for you.'
'Yes,' Joyce said, finally looking up. 'I suppose it is… but I don’t know what order they go in!'
I looked up the word "ephemeral" the other day. Sometimes I look up a word I know for no apparent reason. And as I was looking over the comments, I saw this:
"Life is too ephemeral."
I instantly cringed when I saw this. Doesn't it just sound so crude? Short bro, short. "Life is too short," or "life is fleeting," is fine, but "life is too ephemeral?" It sounds like someone looked up a thesaurus and replaced an easy word with a difficult one in an effort to sound smart. But just change the order, and there's magic:
Life too, is ephemeral.
Oh the beauty of the written art.
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