Claudia Castro Luna: Assiduously
From a coffee cup’s sweet bitterness into cold wind swept
knowing that the place you search and yearn for is nowhere, no
street names, no city gate. No degrees nor longitudinal measures
to speak of. A compass can be useless when you are lost. Nowhere
multiplies in your chest ravenous, like yeast. It hurts. The exact
second, your shadow on the pavement. Sometimes your life is a
minute ahead and a few days behind the place you want to be.
Sometimes things align and you want to tear a piece of the
shadow as you would a piece from a loaf of bread. But this place
you search has no replicable terrain, no map. It moves as you
move. A shapeshifter with a tropic of memory, a tropic of fear, a
meridian to decide you can and an equator to know you choose.
Discussion Questions
What does it feel like to have “your life [be] a minute ahead and a few days behind the place you want to be”?
What role does direction play in this piece? What has been your compass during this time of great uncertainty?
How has the pandemic or an illness altered time for you? For society?
Reflections from #MedHumChat
“This line resonates with me in relation to parenting. Especially now, during the pandemic. So many competing timelines—at work with patients, at home managing school for my young children, worrying about my elderly parents…hard to remain in the present.” —@marypanwriter
“as a couple of others have expressed, this line made me think of how we forge ahead in life, as work and life demand require, while our emotional processing can lag a bit behind. It’s tough to stay on track and build time for reflection, which can’t be rushed” —@juliagracecohn
“My last year of residency helped me define my values. That has been my 'true North' since. Whenever I lose sight of what I am in this moment, I go back to that time where for a moment, just a gloriously tiny magical moment, the world made sense. And then I go on.” —@JarnaShahMD
“My compass in this pandemic points in the direction of hope. That people begin understanding severity, things get better, loved ones get closure, lessons are learned. It’s hard, compass feels rusty.” —@nidhipat19
About this #MedHumChat
“Assiduously” was paired with “Solving for X” by Pam Durban for a #MedHumChat discussion over A Question of Time on November 18, 2020.
The pieces for this chat and the discussion questions were curated by Mary Pan (@marypanwriter).
About the Author
Claudia Castro Luna is the author of Killing Marías and This City as well as an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. She currently teaches at Seattle University and serves as the poet laureate of Washington State.