Exercise in Creative Imagery, a.k.a. Ode to Anyway
Now is as good a time as any to pay heartfelt tribute to the awesomeness that is the word "anyway".
ANYWAY
A first-off observation: it is hardly the rich cream and suet pudding of all words. Such categories are reserved for glamourous and delicious words, such as "coruscating", "charlatan", "phlegmatic", "exuberance" and "ravishing". Neither is it an earthy, solid and sturdy word, such as viz. "earth", "solid" and "sturdy".
Rather, if language were a landscape, I would place "anyway" in the category of Minute Paraphernalia of Scenery:
...the artful curl of a vagrant frond...
...the dull sparkle of damp soil under a stoic rock...
...the wind-lashed frenzy of crisp-crackle dead leaves...
...the bump rugged corrugation of timbered cottage floors...
...the blunt shine of a polished button...
...the glistening honey melt of iced morning dew...
It is to this inherently miscellaneous category that words like "anyway" - as well as "of", "ever" and "and" - belong: pepper and salt, used and abused, but unappreciated, taken for granted, and largely ignored.
Such an aesthetic word. Roll it in your mouth; taste the satisfaction of the balanced syllables. And such a useful word! I can scarcely conceive of a more polite way to excuse oneself from conversation; a more efficient way of changing the topic; a more generic way to break the proverbial Uncomfortable Silence; an easier way to start a new paragraph...
...or a better way to terminate a long train of thought that is evidently going nowhere...
Anyway.
:)