Often I dreamt of that day when I would pack my stupid smelly black trunk with its red half moons.  Often, I dreamt of that day when I could eat all my provisions to make my wooden box lighter. I would pack both my wooden box (for provisions) and metal trunk (for school clothes) and hop on the bus from sleepy Cape Coast, and its strict boarding school, to home in Tema. Where the happy noise is, and where my wonderful Nana cooked heavenly——no more gari! The blissful vacation days! Bliss here meaning sleep, sleep, sleep and not waking up at 5am, or sharing the bathroom with so many girls! That dream kept me going during the long school months. Then it would come, and I would go home. But after about two weeks at home, I would find myself missing school so terribly. Crazy?!

This has been the state of my life so far. Wanting, and living for something only to receive it and find myself completely unimpressed by it. Or wanting to go back to the time when I desired it because I burn more then: I was much more happier in my innocent wanting than in my achieving. It is like slaving for the perfect work. You don’t know what it’s going to look like, but you have this feeling that

[One of My favorite works…it amuses me that the background in this image is actually water]

you will know it when you see it.  So you work, and this crazy belief sustains you.  Then somehow you get there, to the work that you’ve been burning for, and in a minute you love it so much, but in the next minute you start desiring the making of another piece that would feel as good, or even better.  Crazily you miss that thing that kept you excited in the making of it. That force that fed your flames.

Every now and then, which is really everyday, when I find myself working towards something, I also find myself reflecting on this. Now I am writing my papers, and I am awfully frustrated but in a weird sense, happy to be so. That I have something to be frustrated about, something to complain about, something that is consuming me is wonderful. But, like most things, it will be over, and what it will produce won’t even show the pacing scenes, the hair pulling, the talking very loudly to myself or to the wall, and the expressions that my face wore. None of these would show in the submission. The life of the making often fades into memory.
–
Jane