“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

At about 12:45 PM an officer from the West Elmira Police came to the back door. He delivered a name and phone number from a woman in Alberta, Canada, who wanted Jane to call her. This was the same officer who’d brought us the message from Julia Bade two or three weeks ago. However, he knew about his fellow officer’s encounter here at the house with Fred Conyers last Saturday.

It turns out that the officer took Fred to the Rescue Mission, rather than the Salvation Army (they may be connected, for all we know). Fred stayed overnight, was let go, went to the local Holiday Inn, and was arrested for failure to pay for services. Meaning meals, I suppose. He was kept in jail overnight, then released. The officer I talked to today didn’t know what had happened to him after that. So as I wondered about the day it all happened, Fred was turned loose in town, and might have indeed turned up at our door. He didn’t though; so far, that is.

I explained a few more details to the officer today, and he told me to give them a call if by any chance Fred shows up again. Like me, he didn’t believe that Fred flew here from Denver—that is, talking a stewardess into giving him free transportation all that way—yet Fred got here somehow, and I explained that the manuscript of Fred’s that I’ve looked over contains descriptions of his landing in Pittsburgh, PA, and working his way east through a series of stops at restaurants, in which he’d add to his manuscript each time.

(The 60th envelope experiment used as object a quick black line drawing, on porous white paper, that I made of a giant begonia plant at the office. [...] It has grown beautifully from a tiny slip that I took to the office approximately last March. Jane has not seen the plant, hardly ever visiting the office.

[...] The interesting thing here is that the larger leaves of the plant at the office are now beginning to show definite brownish tones. As stated Jane has never seen the plant at the office in its fine growth—merely a slip from a parent plant here in the apartment. [...]

[...] Jane and I have thought back, and conclude that it is very possible I took the slip to the office during March. [...] Neither of us have any idea of what day, 4, 24, etc., I took the begonia slip to the office.

(In addition, Jane has asked me at various times to bring home a slip from this office plant, so that she can start another pot; she has been quite impressed with my descriptions of how well the office plant has been doing.

[...] Though I have been in the newspaper building, I did not know that these offices were upstairs. Bill’s own office is downstairs, as I knew, and if I thought about it at all I assumed that all his business took place there. I had no idea that Bill had any connection with the upstairs offices at all, since the editorial work is done there, and he has nothing to do with that at all. [...]

[...] I believe that his office is going to be changed or redecorated or perhaps repainted; some change of this sort in the near future, if it has not already been done. [...]

But the office is not the same now, or very shortly will not be as it was when we were there. [...]

[...] Bill told us that he would have to leave for a few minutes to pick up an advertisement at the bus terminal and take it to the newspaper office, the Star-Gazette, where he works. [...]

(Jane and I left F. Fell’s office, where the 360th session had been held, at about 11:45 AM, with an appointment to meet Mr. Van Over at about noon. He had a very few minutes for us before leaving his own office to keep an appointment. At his office Jane was informed that a phone call awaited her from the Alan Burke TV show; a Mr. Shapiro was on the line at that moment. [...]

(As in Frederick Fell’s office that morning, Jane now announced that Seth was about and that she was capable of holding a session. [...]

[...] The same kind of atmosphere had been set that morning at F. Fell’s office.

[...] A brief history: Last month our friend Marie Colucci let a local dentist, Dr. Lodico, whom Jane and I have not met, borrow an abstract painting of mine to try out in his office. A couple of weeks ago, on August 31, Dr. Lodico sent payment for the painting, with a request to see more abstracts for his office. [...]

[...] Arriving there, we saw that Dr. Lodico had no office in the building in question. Instead we discovered his office—and that of his father—to be in a conventional two-story building across the street from the building with a flattish roof.

(This was the first time either of us had specifically noted that Dr. Lodico had his office in a certain building that both of us had driven past many times. His sign is fastened to the wall of the house beside an office door, beneath a porch roof, and would not be readable, probably, from a passing car.

[...] Also, checking out the building data described on the last page, we saw that flowers were used as decoration for both the Lodico office, and the medical office building with the flat roof, across the street. [...]

Scene 2—Office of large corporation. On phone a man makes appointment to take me to dinner to discuss giving me an excellent position but I can’t hear him properly and got to another office to check time, etc. [...]

[...] I called him at the office this afternoon, but there was no answer. [...] When he’d done so later in the afternoon, he further offered to do the necessary work here at the house, saving Jane going to his office. [...]

[...] His beliefs were not of the best at all, as far as physically getting to the office. [...]

[...] It should be added that I’d said that I thought it strange Jane was seemingly more concerned about making it to the dentist’s office than she was about why she had to be there to begin with.)

(After I received no answer at Paul’s office, I thought of waiting to call him at home after supper tonight, with Jane’s agreement. [...]

(This time, I found myself standing in the doorway of an office building in New York City. [...] It was not an office I had ever been in, yet was next door to an office I used to visit occasionally when Jane and I lived in Tenafly, NJ, and I was free-lancing as an artist in NYC. The building could be the Carnegie Hall office building, or one very close to Carnegie Hall, on 57th St. I do not recall the street number. [...]

(The entrance to Charles Biro’s offices was at the end of a hallway, as I remember, and the door to the anonymous office I visited tonight is next door to it. Tonight, I stood inside this open office door. [...]

(However, I never moved from my position just inside the open office doorway. I saw nobody else, and recall nothing else of the office itself. [...]

Drive to post office with R. Almost too many improvements to remember; much greater motion right ankle; considerable new motion left foot; left knee looser; also right knee, to lesser degree; head-neck areas and ligaments all definitely loosening; and jaw. [...]

(I went over to the Infirmary’s office with them after the meeting to get a bunch of papers Kim wanted to give me, because doing it this way would save me an extra trip sometime later. [...]

[...] Over in her office, Kim Evans said that the report on Jane noted that her joints were “frozen.” [...]

[...] I’ll stop at the post office to pick up some Christmas stamps. [...]

[...] Nevertheless, I stopped at the post office on my way to the hospital to mail all of the information about the Infirmary and Steve to Pete. [...]

[...] Am to meet her in her office Friday at 2:30 PM. [...]

(“Connection with music”, reminds me that I heard music while in the AAA office; the music was piped throughout the new building by a public address system. Jane and I are well aware of this because a friend of ours worked in another office in the MCI building, and remarked often on this piped music, which she disliked but was forced to listen to all day on the job. In addition, the AAA office was below ground level and without windows, and my personal opinion was that the music was some kind of compensation for not being able to see daylight.

[...] The station was located across the street from the AAA office, and the car was at the station while I was in the AAA office.

(“A connection with the letter M”, referred, I thought, to the initials, MCI, which are used to designate the modern new office building here in Elmira, at which I bought my membership in the AAA. [...]

[...] I did not discover this until I returned home, so when I went back downtown to pick up the car at the station, I dropped in at the MCI building to the AAA office. [...]

The second scene takes place in a large office building that represents the world and its usual pursuits. [...]

[...] The dream gave him three scenes representing various areas of his life in terms of time—the institution of the gallery and his early ideas, the office representing the world, and his hiding place, which was a kind of storage barn. [...]

[...] I’d sat alone in the office yesterday, the date of my original appointment, with no one ever showing up. [...]

[...] This experience follows, of course, the one I had for my last appointment, and which is on record — when I chipped a tooth and went to my dentist’s office the same day to see if he could fix it — and discovered that I had an appointment I’d forgotten about for that very same time on that same day. [...]

[...] I left at 1:20, after leaving a note on his desk at the office.

(After supper this evening I went around the corner to the office of Doc Piper and invited him to attend the session, since last week he had expressed an interest in doing so. Our friend accepted the invitation, with the proviso that he would come to the apartment providing his office was clear of patients by 9 PM. [...]

[...] By 8:55 Doc Piper had not appeared, and from my studio in the back of the apartment I could look across backyards and see his office lights still on. [...]

[...] He’s already talked to Andrew Fife and Mary Krebs, and visited the head of the local Blue Cross office, on the floor beneath his own office. [...]

(Because I was impatient after breakfast this morning I called Pete Harpending’s office at 8:30. [...]

[...] At the realtor’s office two days later, then, we signed the initial papers leading to the formal purchase, which will be consummated in a couple of weeks or so.

[...] Several years ago our medical friend moved to a more residential area in Elmira — just where we didn’t know — but kept his offices in his original home. [...]

(We’ve also discovered that several other professional people who live near the hill house maintain offices in the old near-downtown neighborhood surrounding the apartment house.)

[...] He was older, graying, impeccably dressed in the dark blue uniform of an officer of the Navy. [...] There’s a resemblance between the two, but I’m not particularly claiming that the officer is the civilian. [...]

[...] He was an officer of considerable rank, with a number of stripes on his cuffs. [...]

[...] I think she’s quite right about the naval officer being a symbol for the more conventional, or rigid, rational self. [...]

(The brief session was held in the office of Jane’s publisher, Frederick Fell, in New York City. [...]

(The second part of the data concerning an unusual session, can be interpreted as applying to this session, the 360th, which took place in F. Fell’s office in New York City on August 16, the day after the Cratsley meeting. [...]