Jennifer Lynn Barnes (born 1984 – present age 31) graduated high school in 2002, and from Yale University with a degree in cognitive science in May of 2006. She was awarded a Fulbright to do post-graduate work at Cambridge (autism), and then returned to the states, where she completed her PhD. in developmental psychology. She's currently Professor of Psychology at the University of Oklahoma specializing in the cognitive science of fiction and storytelling.
Internal narrative: "In my perception, the world isn’t a graph or formula or an equation. It’s a story. Fear, to a great extent, comes from a story we tell ourselves, so I chose to tell myself a different story. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. It wasn’t long before I actually wasn’t afraid.”
Years Educ / Work Age
2002 Isabel & Rocco (19)
2002 – 2006 Oxford (19 – 23)
2006 – 2008 Amer Film Inst (23 – 25)
2009 – 2011 Pink Hotel (26 – 28)
2012 – 2013 Travel Writer (29 – 30)
Guardian - Observer
Sunday Telegraph
2013 Art of Leaving (30)
"I’d like to say I was defying [Martha’s] gravity just as often as feeling its snare ..but my efforts were more likely spent clinging on with white knuckles to not be dislodged. 15 years later I see Martha on a blog and feel transported. After 2 hours of mainlining the blog ..my pupils just slightly smaller than dimes ..my mind a blast crater ..I feel I have to go to California.”
“..I grasped, all at once, why I was married [to Matthew]. We often sat together in a place of deliberation, where the temperature was cool and the atmosphere clear. In the past I’d thought it was a weakness, a failure of ardor. Now I see it was actually the ark where we survive .. ”
"An astronomer needs more poetic imagination than common sense, because the magnificent complexity of the universe cannot be measured or explained, but only intuited."
On the Road (1947) Jack Kerouac chronicles his brief love affair with a young Chicana migrant worker, ‘Bea Franco,’ in California’s Central Valley. It was a true story and part of the book with the most heart ..I felt (♡)
With the first kiss people usually invent a story about falling in love “..Eva couldn’t help inventing a story about falling out of love. She considered herself talented at leaving people and places. The first smile of a love affair was mostly fiction and blind hope, but you knew where you were with good-bye. You knew that mistakes would dissolve, doors would open, and then everything would be possible again. It was the ending, Eva maintained, that gave meaning to the story.”
”The secret to getting away with shit is to switch off your personality and go undetected: .. most of the million ghosts walking mindlessly from A to B in every city of the world are inconspicuous because they aren’t noticing themselves, but an arrogant person or an anxious person is noticeable because they are so aware of existence.” ‘The Pink Hotel’
Stephen Moyer and Anna Paquin plan to film ‘The Pink Hotel’. The narrative follows a seventeen-year old London girl who flies to Los Angeles for the funeral of Lilly, a mother she’d barely known. While there, she uncovers a suitcase full of photographs, letters and clothes in the attic of the eponymous hotel and, led by these clues, sets out to unravel her mothers’ secrets. Stothard is hoping that, as locals, Paquin and Moyer film on location at the real pink hotel (also known as The Cadillac) in Venice Beach.
Waking in L.A. with Anna Stothard: "I lived in Thai Town and Little Armenia, in this apartment block full of just all different sorts of people. And I found that, not driving — I have never driven — I just found that I walked this version of Los Angeles that none of my friends seemed to know anything about. And I’d walk out of my apartment and there would be a huge Armenian wedding going on, and then you’d pass through the crowds of these Armenians and you’d get Thai children peeling oranges on a street corner for a Thai altarpiece. And the Armenians never seemed to talk to the Thai people. There were all these different layers of the city that nobody seemed to cross over. Everyone says that LA is all these suburbs looking for a city. But actually in every little bit of Los Angeles there are so many different layers. You just have to look beyond the cliche of Los Angeles."
In the book ‘Tale for the Time Being’ [link], a 100-year-old Zen master says:
“For the time being
...words scatter
are they fallen leaves?”
In the Shōbōgenzō [link], Dōgen Zenji says:
“We are all time beings
existing as passing moments in time .”
So, I guess to answer the Zen masters question: Yes, words are like fallen leaves because once spoken, they quickly pass and exist only as prior moments of time. ..transient as falling leaves. Another way to answer, I suppose, is by not answering at all ..in observance of the insubstantial nature of words.
Benedict De Spinoza was a philosopher living in Amsterdam during the ‘age of enlightenment’ ..around the mid-1600’s. What interests me is that his ideas pre-figured modern day neuroscience ..especially regarding the relationship between the mind and body. He talked about the ‘natural wisdom of the body ..speculating that ‘feelings’ are the mind’s ‘ideas’ about the body ..and so on. Today neuroscientists know we have an ‘interoceptive sense’ that carries messages from the body to the brain where they register as feelings and a sense of wellbeing. Feelings have the same value as other thoughts and ideas when it comes to guiding behavior. In fact, without them people would not be able to make even the most simple decision ..like what to eat or what to wear. The intellect paralyzes ..whereas feelings add weight to information, which, in turn, narrows things down, so we can act comfortably ..without undue deliberation.
Looking for Spinoza,by Antonio Damasio, is a highly readable book on the neuroscience of the mind~body relationship.
Charlotte Simmons, by Tom Wolfe, also shows the importance of feelings. The fictitious Charlotte Simmons is a super smart, high achieving honors student and valedictorian. However in college, her concerns about approval ..what other people think ..and what's 'cool' ..carry more weight than her own 'keen intellect'.
