“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Ruburt felt that you did not trust his relationship with Tam as far as the spontaneous handling of business was concerned, and that perhaps the dissatisfaction you expressed about Prentice had to do with a certain emotional sloppiness, where both he and Tam did not have the proper regard for detail, and lacked a kind of integrity that you valued.

In the meantime our books began to do well financially. These people, he felt, were not the romantic artists he had dreamed of, but sometimes very calculating, and would blemish an artistic product with what he believed to be moral incompetence.

Seven represented the same kind of synthesis, and these were both Jane-type productions. After these Ruburt could not make up his mind. If you did not really approve of Prentice as a publisher, then he wondered seriously whether he should follow through with a new house, and with the hopes that Eleanor offered. You typed my book, and I appreciate the work and the reasons, but Ruburt felt it was also because you did not trust Prentice, and always that you thought another publisher would do a better job overall.

This immediately brought certain aspects to light that had been hidden to some extent while you were more physically separated. Some of this has to do, again, with the fact that you thought your concern automatically expressed your love. You were together more. When you saw him try to get up he knew you loved him, but the frown was what he saw. He was always trying to hide from you. Part of it was his projection because he felt you thought he was so stupid for having anything wrong at all, so the more he saw you frown the stupider he felt, and the more guilty. And the more he tried to hide his condition.

Both of you at times do. In your particular personal relationship Ruburt began to feel that when you looked at him you were comparing him precisely with “that perfect physical self” that seemingly so eluded him, and in the face of that image, any improvement at all began to seem so insignificant as to be meaningless.

He made the bed that day. Usually he would think of how slow and clumsy he was, and if you were waiting or watching how impatient you might be. That day, he thought “After Rob seeing how I really am in the morning—if he saw me now he would see how much better I am,” and he felt proud of doing what he was doing as well as he could.

You said “I think you can perform 50% better than you are doing, if you realize it.” That kind of suggestion is good. It arouses and stimulates activity without causing him to compare his experience with what is to him an ideal. Take your break.

Eleanor, who professed such greater literary understanding and appreciation for Dialogues, in her turn refused it as well, and also Rich Bed. Ruburt never thought Tam had any great understanding of poetry; but what good did Eleanor’s “superior” appreciation do if the book was refused after such compliments?

To him, Dialogues had to be published at once. When Eleanor came back onto the picture, the time before this last visit, there was also a trip to Rochester preceding it. Here was Eleanor again, saying, “Save me Bed,” and even speaking of Dialogues while in no position to accept them. Here again, more strongly, were hints that Eleanor could do more than Prentice.

Ruburt took the responsibility for his consciousness in other areas far more than most people do. He had no strong background structure in which to build up a confidence in the body mechanisms. The youthful body was able to maintain an equilibrium.