We work in the dark

Enargia is a term I leaned while studying rhetoric, which I loosely translate as "bring before the eyes." It is part of the narrative process, the exposition part of a writing, where the writer reminds the reader of a group of ideas or images, to draw the mind sequentially through a thought process.

I googled enargia to find a useful link/definition (see above) and also came across this site, which seems cool, too.

I started this post with defining enargia because I want to explain why I have hundreds of scraps of paper tacked to the walls of my office, and to focus in on one particular scrap. I surround my desk with little reminders of things both pressing (next semester's schedule edits) and timeless (quotations that remind me why I do what I do). I'm practicing a physical enargia, bringing these images before my eyes every day as I sit down to work.

One scrap has a quotation from Henry James:
"We work in the dark--we do what we can--we give what we have. Our doubt is our passion and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art."

I didn't know the quotation's context when I first copied it down.   You can click the Henry James link above to read a synopsis of _The Middle Years_ , the short story from which the quotation is taken, or you can forge your own meaning as I did.

I think about my work, the passions that drive me, as the art I am in the process of creating.  I keep getting up each morning to do it again. I don't always know that I'm doing in "right," just that I'm doing it, that I'm driven to do it, and quite possibly I am getting better at it because I keep doing it.

Let's hope this proves true for my blogging as well ;)