“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Last night when I got home, I saw that the young fellow Frank Longwell has put me in touch with to do the lawn had done his job; the place looked great. This afternoon he was to come back and do the raking.

(Jane was on her back again when I got there. She seemed to feel a little more comfortable. After an average lunch she read the last two sessions to me, wearing her new close-up glasses, and zipped right through them. I told her I think that now she can read aloud faster than I can.

(The mail from Prentice-Hall is increasing considerably, whether or not this is in line with Seth’s recent statement that an increase in sales of the books is under way. Batches of fan mail have arrived the last three days. Already I’m way behind, and feel that I’ll never get it answered. In fact, today was the first day in 330 that I didn’t answer at least a few letters from readers. It gave me a strange feeling of freedom; the afternoon seemed stretched out, or longer. I believe I’m on the point of renouncing the fan mail, or most of it. Perhaps I’ll take the time from Dreams to work out a final fan letter — including Seth’s — to send folks who write. One I can sign, and that’s it.

(She identified with writing poetry very early in life. “I believed what I wrote, but people said I’d grow out of it and have kids, and I was determined not to.” Had trouble sharing poetry with most boyfriends; smarter to play dumb, she discovered. Marie had always encouraged her poetry, and the two women shared it for a number of years. Jane used to write poems to get back in Marie’s good grace: “At the same time I felt like I was betraying myself for doing it. I remember that quite well.” I didn’t remember Jane telling me this before, though she might have.

(Jane was terrified a couple of times that she might be pregnant by me. Yet except for one time in a passionate moment she never had any urge to have a child. “But I certainly felt the feminine part of you was the part you couldn’t trust,” she said. As we talked about these things she said she was getting edgy and nervous, and wanted a cigarette, so we were getting close to buried feelings.

(The book referred to is a French-English textbook from Jane’s days at Skidmore College, in Saratoga springs, New York. Several years ago Jane had started reviewing her knowledge of French, and I had asked her to teach me a bit about the language. Fun, but neither one of us had stayed with our ideas.)