EPHEMERA DECONSTRUCTED.
Conceiving
Ephemera.
The tale of the ephemeral is something I have been mulling over for several
years now. I first conceived the idea to be part of a collection of thematically
linked long short stories called "Dangerous Lovers". I wrote at the first four
or five of the twelve storylines I had plotted, and submitted the proposal to
several different publishing companies. The one for which it was originally
intended had, in the manner of publishers, completely changed its direction and
was now publishing non-fiction only. Few other local companies will consider
short stories that are not in the literary fiction genre, and my collection
failed to find a home. I retired the finished portion to the figurative bottom
drawer and left the remaining storylines undeveloped.
Reviving Ephemera .
In the last days of 2005, I thought of "Ephemera" again. I am not sure why, but
this time I saw it as a poetry cycle rather than a short story. Looking at the
concept, I saw that it fell naturally into chapters. I decided to produce it is
a thematic whole, complete with readings and pictures.
Since I would be doing the reading myself, I needed a bracket story to account
for the fact that a fanciful tale about a young man and a sprite should have a
human female narrator. I also thought that the use of such a narrator would
allow me to describe the central character in visual terms, which would
compensate for the lack of background about occupation, family and current
situation.
Nathaniel.
Originally, the protagonist was to have been a scientist in the beginning of the
story, and a poet at the end, but since the narrator knows nothing of him, and
meets him just once, I left this out of the cycle.
I chose the name, Nathaniel, partly because it is easy to incorporate into
verse. It has four syllables, and is stressed on the second one. Because the
last two are unstressed, the name can be pronounced in three syllables if
needed. There were several different names I could have picked, but I happened
to have been listening to Jeff Wayne's "War of the Worlds", so this name was in
my head.
The Narrator.
Next, I needed to think about my narrator. I knew she had to be female, because
I would be "playing" her, and I didn't want her to be anybody special because
her role in the story is reactive. Also, I needed the kind of character who
could sit down quite naturally beside an elderly man, and whom Nathaniel himself
would see as a good listener.
The Setting.
The setting was easy. I wanted a place of water, birds and trees. It needed to
be fairly quiet, because too many people running around playing football or
walking dogs would have spoiled the mood. I chose an autumn afternoon, and it is
probably a weekday, which helps account for the lack of onlookers.
The Ephemeral.
The word "ephemera" has two meanings. In one case, it is something of transitory
interest, and impermanent form. Thus theatre programmes and advertisements are
classed as ephemera by those who collect them. The other meaning is a biological
one, and refers to an insect that lives for a day its winged form. This was the
meaning I intended in this cycle.
Having imagined my short-lived lady, I had to think about what she would be
like. This is fantasy, but like all fanciful material, it had to have rules. I
needed the first meeting to include a form with which Nathaniel could interact.
It would have been interesting to introduce the child as a baby, first, but this
would lead to all kinds of problems for Nathaniel (seeing an abandoned newborn)
and for me (did she hatch, or had she a mother?) and so I chose a young child
for the first appearance.
The little dawnchild never speaks, but she is happy and playful. Since she is,
in a sense, part of the park, she wears a garment made from daisies. To
Nathaniel, who thinks she is a human child, it looks like a child's dress.
Daisies (day's eyes) are symbols of innocence, and also tend to inhabit parks
and other grassy places, so the dawnchild would blend in well with her
background. The dawnchild does see Nathaniel, but she is more interested in
chasing thistledown or blowing a dandelion clock. The finches from the plane
tree are happy in her company.
In the next poem, the child reappears as a teenager. This time, she is less
lively and more introspective, and at first she is startled to see Nathaniel.
However, she concludes he doesn't mean any harm, and smiles at him, and then
settles down to occupy herself by the river. A butterfly lands on her shoulder,
and Nathaniel "sees", or hallucinates, that the girl also has wings. (This is a
reference to the insect she parallels.) He doesn't initiate a conversation with
her, because she appears to be fourteen or so and he is quite a lot older. She
looks like the dawnchild and wears similar clothing, so Nathaniel concludes she
may be a sister. Before he can ask, she wanders away.
Lady Meridian is a mature form of the same girl, and appears at noon. She is
wearing a shawl, and is now familiar enough with Nathaniel to share some
cherries with him. Perhaps cherry trees are unlikely in a park, but around where
I live, apples and plums quite often grow wild, so I thought the idea would not
be impossible.
In sharing a heart-shaped red fruit with Nathaniel, the ephemeral is offering
symbolic love and romance. She may also be offering more, but I left this
deliberately vague. She, like the earlier incarnations, leaves after an hour or
so.
As the afternoon wears on, an older woman comes. She is the motherly type, and
offers Nathaniel a pear. Again, there is symbolism here, as pears often
represent ripeness and fertility, and are "female" in shape. To Nathaniel, she
looks like a Greek goddess, and he asks her if she might be Penelope (Odysseus'
wife) or Demeter (the corn goddess, Persephone's mother). By now, Nathaniel has
realised she is not a normal human, and so he expects her to leave as the others
have done.
The final visitation comes as dusk falls. By now, the lady is frail and
silver-haired, and she wears a shawl of thistledown. The finches in the plane
tree that played with the dawnchild stir as she passes. To them, she is natural
and familiar. She trusts Nathaniel (after all, she has known him for her whole
life) and is contented in his company as she lies down and fades into death.
Epilogue.
With the epilogue, we return to the park here-and-now. It is fifty years on, and
Nathaniel, far from being a starveling young man, is hale and happy, if somewhat
time-worn. He has come on the anniversary of his strange day, bringing cherries
in the memory of the woman he knew--so briefly from his perspective, so long
from hers.
He has had many years to come to terms with the incident, and many years to
study the possibilities of what he saw. Since the ephemeral is referred to as
his "muse", it seems that he did become an artist of some kind. Whether he ever
married or not is not a part of this story, and he is able to assure the
narrator that the ephemeral was not to be pitied, as she lived the allotted span
of her kind. The questions remain - was she real, or was she an illusion
conjured by someone on the verge of starvation? Whatever she was, her influence
on Nathaniel was a kindly one. He has loved her and cried for her, but doesn't
pine for her.
The Writing and Reading.
Writing "Ephemera" in verse was an interesting experience. I chose a simple form
of eight-line stanzas for the main poem, and nine-liners for the bracket verses.
All the pieces use rhyme and assonance and/or consonance, and the pattern is
different in each one. I changed the rhyme scheme to avoid having the poems
sounding repetitive.
Committing the pieces to audio readings was a little daunting, especially as I
have a transient lisp left over from my younger days, and so find combinations
like "zenithed sun" and "Nathaniel sought" difficult to pronounce. One of the
reasons I used the audio readings was because some of the lines were almost
conversational in nature, and also because some words that do rhyme in
Australian English apparently don't in other dialects. I wanted readers to hear
the piece as I conceived it. In every case I pronounced the words as they come,
with the stresses falling on the correct syllables (i.e., not distorted to force
the meter). Someone commented that "plane" and "again" don't rhyme in his
dialect, but in Australian English "again" is a rare word that has two accepted
pronunciations. It can be rhymed with "men" or with "main".
Using photographs to illustrate fantasy is difficult, so I usually settle for
settings. In this case, I took several photographs, but finally decided to use
the same one for every poem, changing it subtly in a photo editor to reflect the
passing of the day. The photograph was taken just behind my house, on a cool
grey summer day. The trees are willows, hawthorn, wattles and sycamore.