Ginger Jones (@plaything______) is a poet from California.
#109: Ginger Jones
California, USA
What does health, or being healthy, mean to you?
Freedom.
How would you describe your current lifestyle?
Right now I’m living and working on a farm in northern New Mexico. I spend most of my days outside in the sunshine. I weed gardens, hoe fields, build structures, fix whatever is broken, care for animals, ride horses, and swim in creeks and lakes whenever I can. I like being dirty. I like making my body useful. Physical labor quiets my mind in a way nothing else can.
How do you start and end your days?
Farm life wakes me up at six. I stretch for half an hour, drink black coffee and Xiao Yao San tea for my liver, then feed the chickens, collect their eggs, water the greenhouse, check the fences, and feed the other animals and eat. Breakfast is usually three fresh eggs and half an avocado. I also take a B-complex and omega-3 supplements. Hours will go by before I speak my first words.
In the evening I water the gardens and cook dinner, usually chicken with whatever greens are growing nearby. I make a shandy with beer and lemonade and watch the sky change colors while I talk to people I love on the phone. After a while I go inside and sit on my bedroom floor and write until my eyes get heavy. I crawl into bed naked and silent with the moon watching over me. Sometimes I play music to lull myself to sleep.
Can you recall a moment when you became more aware of your health, or your relationship to it changed?
One of the hardest things I’ve had to learn is what to do with pain. A few years back, two old friends of mine died just a month apart. One overdosed on fentanyl and the other killed himself while high. I was so overcome with grief that life became almost unbearably precious to me. I now know that grief is just love with nowhere to go, so you give it new places to live. Whenever I choose beauty over bitterness, kindness over resentment, presence over fear, I am more alive and thankful to live life beautifully because I know love is infinite.
There are things you can’t see but your mind still recognizes. Sometimes what I feel is more true than what I know.
What’s your relationship to self-healing?
I’m not interested in understanding myself too much. I’ve become very protective of my own mystery. There are parts of myself I don’t want to fully understand. I think the soul deserves some privacy. I heal when I release myself from expectations of knowing. I want to be the kind of person who can humanize herself. I want room to become someone I haven’t met yet. That feels closer to healing than certainty ever has.
Writing doesn’t help me understand myself, but it helps me stay honest. Sometimes I finish writing something and realize I don’t understand myself at all, but I still find it beautiful and true nonetheless. Sometimes the body knows what the mind never will. Being a fool will lead you to great things.
Most of the men who read my work assume I’m writing about them. As though I’ve arranged all my earthly desires around theirs, but really, I’m just a slut for love. When I write about a man, I’m almost never writing about him alone. I’m writing about the impossible distance between one soul and another. I’ve found that true poets understand this completely. I’m not sure if that’s healing, but it’s doing something.
Do you have a spiritual practice?
Love.
Do you work with any practitioners, texts, or modalities on a regular basis?
I grew up around Christian Science and Buddhism so there has always been an emphasis on the relationship between mind and body.
My mom has always told me: Stand porter at the door of thought.
I’ve always believed that what you allow into your mind shapes your body and the reality you perceive. There are things you can’t see but your mind still recognizes. Sometimes what I feel is more true than what I know. True wisdom is more questions than answers. Anyone who is completely certain about themselves or the world is faking it or not having any fun. I hope I never become somebody so sure of themselves that the world loses its ability to surprise me.
When do you feel the most nourished?
Pleasure nourishes me the most. That pleasure is deepened when my body is given purpose. Falling asleep after hard work. Finishing a sentence that feels truer than I knew I was capable of writing. Cooking for my loved ones. Swimming in cold water on a hot day. Being held tightly. Kissing with my whole mouth. Any labor of love nourishes me.
How do you reset?
As a child I was terrified that I was invisible and nobody could hear me or see me or love me. I still feel like that scared little girl sometimes if I’m alone for too long. But then I just drive into wide open spaces and watch the sky change colors and listen to music and I stand next to a mountain and feel two inches tall. I tell myself it’s okay to not be important to anybody else.
Do you have a favorite meal?
I make a really delicious chicken pot pie. I like warm foods that bring heat to my body like hashes, sweet potatoes, carrots, roasted cabbage, broths, fresh bread with good butter. Sometimes I’ll just eat a rotisserie chicken with my hands and call it a day. I like the skin.
What advice would you give your younger self?
Speak up.
What advice would you give to the person reading this?
Stand porter at the door of thought.
What would you like to see or create more of in the world?
Mercy, patience, grace, kisses, wrap-around porches, gardens, remembrance, free parking, deep breathing, truth, beauty and above all else, love.
So much wisdom here. “I’ve become very protective of my own mystery. There are parts of myself I don’t want to fully understand. I think the soul deserves some privacy.” Thank you, Ginger! 💚💚💚
<thankyou3