“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.

Give us time … When you live in a house that belongs conspicuously to another age, you are to some extent avoiding the contemporary nature of life. Ruburt may find himself furnishing the place more formally than another one, yet the open quality of the air is the kind that you do not hide in.

(“Oh, hell, I’m getting more,” Jane laughed, coming back into the living room. She sat down. “I’ll have to say that when I ask for straight stuff, I get it.” She still looked a bit teary, but at the same time I was sure now that we’d steered away from any probable reality involving Foster Avenue — and perhaps Sayre too, I thought, considering Seth’s material at 10:15 tonight.³

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.