“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

There are alliances and understandings in neighborhoods — signs for others to read. The front entrance of the Foster Avenue house was not even used. The hill house is set up high. Anyone who walks up the steps from the street knows [he or she is] making a trip. Your daily environment is very important to your work, and to Ruburt. You require certain things of your art, and therefore you want the same things in your surroundings. Once you had it where you live now, for all of your criticism. Now it is gone, and you are different.

At this time of your lives it is important that you act. I am telling you that of the [Elmira] houses in your mind it really makes little difference which one you choose. Neither is perfect. You would find yourselves quite hampered in [any] idealistically perfect environment. You need some give-and-take. Either place could well be made to suit your specific needs, and each reflects strong elements of your personalities.

Now: The hill environment is as important to your painting as the ready-made workroom in the Foster Avenue house. The very air is inspiring, so that you will paint more there even if your work area is not immediately as good. The sunny nature [of that house], regardless of what Ruburt thinks now, will help him creatively and physically — but the hill house represents a decision to face the world while maintaining certain necessary and quite reasonable conditions. It provides privacy yet openness. The hillside is not yours, yet it is your view, and it has strong evocative connections with your creative lives. A definite change in living patterns and of psychic attitude will result, that would not happen in the house on Foster Avenue.

With some surprise, then, considering the 53 years that Mr. Markle’s house has been a portion of my psyche, to whatever degree, I found myself turning away from intensifying that involvement. My realization that Jane wasn’t drawn to the place that much had something to do with my decision, although she was willing to make the purchase — but still, I deliberately passed up the opportunity to spend the later years of my life in the main environment I’d known between the ages of 3 and 12. I felt regret and a strong attraction, but in some way realized that Sayre wasn’t the course to follow. Jane agreed, and we made conscious decisions to go elsewhere.