[nescioquid]

Well, I'm right on the Latin grammar, too, but that's an irrelevancy (lol -- I'm a particular kind of fool, if not full-stack). In fact, I think the deeper idea of the essay really is about our own historicity seen through the ephemera of the things that populate our own lives.

If you're writing at a desk, look about you -- what do you see? How much of that would be recognizable in 1, 2, 5 generations (about a century) hence? How much would be intelligible, but quaint (or benighted)? Ultimately the little essay is about ourselves, our own mortality: it is about us as ephemera.