“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

Your private nature makes you wonder if that involves too much disclosure, particularly where family members are concerned. The connection with paintings brings about your desire that the photographs be “as perfect as possible.” You do not want anyone else to have a hand in your own work—that is in your paintings. To reproduce paintings, or in this case photographs, seems to be tampering with them in that regard. That is, if an editor changed your copy you would be annoyed, but reproduction, you fear, can change the copy of a photograph or a painting if it is not done properly. You consider photographs originals in that regard.

Your stomach began to bother you when you considered whether or not to use photographs. (On Sunday, when I bought an album to keep them in.) You have the idea of how the book can appear, a model that exists in your mind. Use the model, but let it be a flexible one, in which your ideals work with the material at hand, molding it. Do not exaggerate, however, so that the ideal seems to be a perfection that cannot be attained given the conditions.

(“Well, with the pendulum I’d arrived at the idea that my stomach bothered me because of a conflict between painting and writing—the time I have for each. I want to do them both—it isn’t that I prefer one over the other. I received the answer that I felt guilty over the conflict: when I wanted to do one, I thought I should be working on the other.”)

(This really surprised me, since for some months I’ve had the idea that my own reluctance to use photographs was a weakness on my part, when it was obvious that they’d add considerably to the books. But my reluctance was based, I thought, on my resentment at Prentice-Hall over their handling of art work; I really didn’t want to let the photos in question out of the house, for fear they’d be lost, etc. This in spite of Tam’s assurances some months ago that they’d be handled with care, etc. I still think my reaction here is valid. But I missed out on the connections involving my mother, disclosure, etc.

(And those are the ones that count, it appears. I felt much better after the session last night. I slept well, and worked well at painting this morning. But when I began typing this material after lunch, the stomach complaints returned. to some degree—proof to me that Seth’s diagnosis had been quite accurate.