"Alive and Languaging"

To anchor is to secure firmly in position. An anchor is a not-small thing with weight enough to anchor other not-small things. To anchor the blog, one posts the inaugural post, to explain its blog-origins, to make clear its blog-intentions, to give the blog, at bottom, foundational weightiness. To do so is no small thing. (Already, I'm stalling, struck by the sight of “to do so is no,” wondering how many two-letter words I could string together and still make sense...if to do so is no...or to do so is no...?) So, if to do so is no small thing, then how to proceed? By amalgamating, of course, by anchoring with an anchor made of anchors. These--which so nicely articulate the origins of this blog called The Daily Inexhaustible--are my anchors. And may I suggest that you read them again and again and again?

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“Since my productiveness proceeds in the final analysis from the most immediate admiration of life, from the daily inexhaustible amazement at it (how else should I have come to create?), I should regard it as a lie to refuse even for a moment its flow towards me.”

– Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters: 1914-1921

 

“Some days I'm afflicted / with Observation Fever / omnivorous perception of phenomena”

– Lawrence Ferlinghetti, from “Bickford's Buddha” in The Secret Meaning of Things

“You have to have your ears open. You have to have your goddamn ears open or you are not going to be a poet. Or you are not going to be a writer of any importance whatsoever.”

– Lew Welch, from an interview in San Francisco Beat

“The world is alive and languaging, though it will not pause to be reread or composed. […] Life presents itself at velocities beyond representation, but quick attentions can quicken our poems, and then oh how prolific all presences become.”

– Donald Revell, from The Art of Attention: A Poet's Eye

“Creativity is the encounter of the intensely conscious human being with his or her world.”

– Rollo May, from The Courage to Create

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As a slightly younger man, and around the time I began to take myself at least somewhat seriously as a writer and thinker-guy, I declared an aesthetic (as you do):

What pleasant purity is to be found, is still possible, in American Life, as lived by yours truly?

An aesthetic question, I suppose, and I'm blushing just a bit, now, after sharing this; But I'll stand by it. Why? Primarily because the above anchor-quotations have intermittently arrived in my life since that fateful declaration day to affirm and further develop my writerly vision, my conception of Beauty (there, I said it), AKA what it is I'm after creatively. What you will see on this blog has something to do with the uber-cliché known as “everyday life.” And Positivity. And Receptivity. And Attentiveness. And “Seeing.” And Thinking On, Over, Into, Through, Around.

In short, The Daily Inexhaustible is to be, is hereby christened: Creative Nonfictions, or, The Brainchildren of Observation Fever.