“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(This week especially has also been one of emotional turmoil for us, and for many others, on the national scene: the inauguration of President Reagan; the freeing of the American hostages by Iran, and their return to this country in stages. Steve and Tracy Blumenthal have also lent us a complete videotaping set, and we’ve experimented a little bit with filming Jane reading poetry. The Gallaghers have also been featured. We’re waiting for an extension cord from Steve for the TV camera so we can try to record sessions. I’ve wanted to try to film Jane reading poetry in the meantime, but each time I think of asking her —usually at night—I can see that she’s so uncomfortable that I let it go.

(“I know we’ve gone over it many times, but I need some refreshing on why he’s equated the lack of mobility with protection. Is it because the immobility keeps him inside the house, where he feels safe, or....?”

(“I was hardly aware of my ass or anything else,” she said. “I felt a whole lot of stuff there on the hostages—stuff it would take forever to get, darn it....” So we talked about what a great book Seth could do on the hostage question. “Before you got through it would cover history, religion, science—the whole works,” Jane said. I agreed that it would certainly encapsulate our whole civilized world structure before Seth finished it. “Forget it,” Jane said. “We’ve got one half done now.” She wanted to know what would happen to Seth’s book on dreams in the meantime, and I explained that it would only wait until the other project was finished. After all, it was waiting now for us to get back to it.