As a teacher of painting I will sometimes assign a difficult text which induces a state of confusion in students. Confusion is a negative mood, and Karla McLaren writes of confusion that it requires one to “honor this time-out and stop looking outside yourself for answers.”

Speed was always a point of pride for me—I talk fast and walk fast. When I was in the third grade I was the fastest kid in school—boys AND girls. Then I got my period in the fourth grade and became the slowest. I remember the first time I got to GO fast was a motorcycle ride in the backwoods roads with an adult man and I was only sixteen. My stepdad always said no to motorcycles and talked about scraping people off the road, but there was something always itching at my plump body, something itching and wanting to go so fast we might escape.