Jena Osman

6:00 a.m.

I wake up still thinking of the Fred Moten and Brandon Lopez performance at Vox Populi last night. When Blanche Brown (the director of Vox and a wonderful poet in her own right) introduced them, she used the word “inimitably,” which Moten then used repeatedly to start off the improvisation. In conversation with Lopez’s stunning percussive bass playing (his whole body was an instrument), Moten talked about the broken arrow of time, remixed emails about deadlines, and sang lines from Frankie Beverly’s “Happy Feelings.” They were the saddest happy feelings. It occurs to me that Moten’s method was a musical processing and remixing of his daily life.

While I’m thinking about all this, I’m doing a 20-minute series of shoulder and neck stretches in bed.

7:30

Amze has cooked me a delicious breakfast, as he does every morning: oatmeal with fruit and nut butter, plus a smoothie. When we got married, he vowed to cook me breakfast every day and he has made good on that promise.

8:40

I cross Broad from east to west and speed walk to the Rittenhouse farmer’s market. Often this is the only day of the week that I go west of Broad. There’s a little fig tree that calls to me, but I resist its charms. On the way home I notice that the Storycorps airstream is in front of the Kimmel Center. Amze and I call this radio segment on NPR “crying corps.”

10:00-2:00

A four-hour Qigong and Mindfulness Workshop at Jefferson. I’ve been looking forward to this for weeks. In 2018, a combination of eldercare stress and work stress caused me to develop a rheumatological condition which made it difficult to walk. The mind-body connection is real! I can’t remember who recommended it, but in trying to get well I took an 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) class at Jefferson and found its brass-tacks approach really helpful. MBSR was designed by a doctor when he noticed that his patients who had a meditation practice had better outcomes than other patients; many hospitals offer it. I don’t meditate very often on my own, but I like to attend sessions and workshops that Jefferson offers its graduates, like this Qigong workshop. What a peaceful and joyful four hours. Shout out to my fabulous teacher, Aleezé Moss.

2:00

When I get home I water all the plants in the courtyard of the building I live in. My neighbor Joni used to do this, but she’s 86 and can’t manage it anymore. I’m trying to learn how to garden. Back in my apartment I read Thaddeus Squire’s substack (The Undersector), and his excellent analysis on why the University of the Arts failed. A concerning passage: “John Fry, a real estate developer at heart, led Penn’s consolidation of a huge swath of West Philadelphia (University City) under president Judith Rodin in the 1990s. He went on to run the same playbook as president of Drexel, and will do so again as incoming president of Temple University. While he is lauded as an ‘innovator,’ I see his presence in higher education more as evidence of a blighted and dying institutional model that has lost its mission way.”

3:30

I head out again, this time to Washington Square Park to meet my friend and comrade in the No Arena fight, Katie Low. Almost a year ago, Chinatown community leaders made a presentation to the Washington Square West Civic Association about the existential threat of the 76Place arena proposal. To my frustration, the Civic decided to take a neutral position on the matter, which led to the formation of our group No Arena Washington Square West. We’re supporters of Chinatown, but we also believe that the arena will cause negative changes to our neighborhood as well. We’ve been fighting as best we can, with the excellent Katie Garth bringing a strong social media game. In the park, KLow and I discuss how to respond to last week’s depressing community meeting, which was staged by the mayor to make the issue seem like a battle between the unions and Chinatown. The unions did a good job of repeating the impossible promises of the billionaire developers. The Chinatown folks did their best to fight for their community and culture. Mayor Parker’s statements seemed aimed at an audience that wasn’t actually in the room? Ryan Boyer, head of the building trades, talked about how desolate and dangerous Market East was, and how something had to be done. After we left the convention center—another project that took land from Chinatown residents in the name of “growth”—it was indeed desolate, and it was more than obvious that an arena that’s used for only 100 nights a year at best will make things much worse. I felt gaslit by Boyer and all the others who claim the project will revitalize the area.

5:00

Amze and I cross paths briefly at home—he’s on his way to dinner with a friend, so I make dinner for myself. While eating, I listen to an episode of the podcast What A Day called “Why You’re Paying for a Billionaire’s Stadium.”

8:00

I sit down at my computer with big plans to grade all my undergrad students’ work. I manage to comment on one project and am overcome by exhaustion. I can’t seem to work at night anymore which is a big problem. Amze comes home and we recap the day. I play the Spelling Bee, I read some of God of the Woods (by my colleague, Liz Moore), and crash, thinking about the word inimitably.

Jena has written a number of books of poetry, and often writes poems about Philadelphia. Over the last 25 years teaching in the MFA program at Temple University, she's had the privilege of teaching and learning from some of the best poets in Philly. On instagram at @jenaos