“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(So far, Jane and I haven’t been able to find a home that we intuitively feel is the right one, although the place on Foster Avenue has intrigued us considerably since we first saw it on February 3. [Since then we’ve looked at many other houses.] Last Thursday afternoon [February 13], Jane was busy with her creative writing class so I went house hunting alone. Without feeling any great curiosity I checked out one place we’d seen before: the hill house. Once again I thought it wouldn’t do for us. Jane agreed when I asked her about it at the supper table.⁷

The first (in Sayre), mentioned far earlier in “Unknown” Reality, you thought was definitely sold, and today you discovered that the sale was not that final.¹⁰ As you discussed these issues a rather important main point escaped your minds: The man who owned the first house (Mr. Markle) was a dealer in antiques and precious stones, utterly devoted to his work and engrossed in it, considering it his art. The house has a garden on one side, with high trees, and a yard on the other, and was relatively shielded. The man’s family took second place to some extent. The kitchen and dining areas were small. He had his office downstairs and he often worked at home. His art came first.¹¹

Again, you have a small kitchen, a garden and some sheltered privacy. Both homes appealed to you, however, because the people who lived in them organized their houses about their work. This is what you picked up and reacted to. You did not react to the attitudes of others in those families who “had to put up with those conditions,” because to you they are natural.

You find typical ranch-style homes, generally now, uncomfortable because — and this should be obvious — they are given over mainly to family living of a particular kind, colon: a kind that obviously separates work from living areas. Work is definitely done outside of the house.

Since you both work at home, those houses do not fit you, generally speaking.¹⁴ Work is not incorporated into daily family life, but certainly exists apart from it — something you find, each of you, relatively inconceivable. You can see farms better, though you are not farmers, simply because there also work and home life are one.

Now: You chose your present neighborhood particularly because when you moved here (from Sayre in 1960) it was highly professional. Work and home were united. The dentist next door lives and works in the same house. So did the other dentist around the corner, and the chiropractor beside him. There was a uniting factor that you recognized, where of office and home were in the same location.

For that reason, certain so-called city locations could serve you well. That is, Elmira is no metropolis, but there are areas where old homes with grounds exist amid other old homes now given over to offices of one kind or another.

When Debbie took Jane and me through the Foster Avenue house on February 5, she told us that another couple — who live in Sayre, and whom I’ll call the Steins — had also inspected the property and planned to make an offer for it, while trying at the same time to sell their present home. Without thinking too much about it, we mentally filed this bit of news along with the connections that had developed out of our house-hunting episodes last year; even now, we still didn’t realize just how the complicated relationships between those events of April 1974, and now, were to continue growing. For instance: When Jane and I “rediscovered” Mr. Markle’s house in Sayre today (February 17), and saw to our considerable surprise that it might still be for sale, we at once visited the Johnsons, who had shown us through it last year. We were then in for another surprise — for the Johnsons are the agents in charge of selling the Steins’ residence in Sayre.

I want to emphasize here that the Steins, who are teachers of music, have been attracted to a home in Elmira that was owned for many years by a man who, as a merchant, had strong connections with music in general and pianos in particular. Mr. Stein, incidentally, teaches in Elmira — hence the decision by him and his wife to move here and so eliminate his workday traveling between Sayre and Elmira.

Seth commented that Jane and I would be interested in the Steins’ home in Sayre. Not so. We looked at it today in passing after the Johnsons told us it was for sale; the truth is, we saw nothing about it that turned us on.