URSULA LE GUIN SOCIAL DREAMING OF THE FRIN ON THE FRINTHIAN PLANE dreams are not private property. There is no such thing as a dream of one's own. Atroubled Frin has no need to lie on a couch recounting dreams to apsychoanalist, for the doctor already knows what the patient dreamed lastnight, because the doctor dreamed it too; and the patient also dreamed whatthe doctor dreamed; and so did everyone else in the neighborhood. To escapefrom the dreams of others or to have a secret dream, the Frin must go outalone into the wilderness. And even in the wilderness, their sleep may be

invaded by the strange dream-visions of lions, antelope, bears, or mice. Whileawake, and during much of their sleep, the Frin are as dream-deaf as we are.Only sleepers who are in or approaching REM sleep can participate in thedreams of others also in REM sleep. REM is an acronym for "rapid eyemovement," a visible accompaniment of this stage of sleep; its signal in thebrain is a characteristic type of electro-encephalic wave. Most of ourrememberable dreams occur during REM sleep. Frinthian REM sleep and that ofpeople on our plane yield very similar EEG traces, though there are somesignificant differences, in which may lie the key to their ability to sharedreams. To share, the dreamers must be fairly close to one another. Thecarrying power of the average Frinthian dream is about that of the averagehuman voice. A dream can be received easily within a hundred-meter radius, andbits and fragments of it may carry a good deal farther. A strong dream in asolitary place may well carry for two kilometers or even farther. In a lonelyfarmhouse a Frin's dreams mingle only with those of the rest of the family,along with echoes, whiffs, and glimpses of what the cattle in the barn and thedog dozing on the doorstop hear, smell, and see in their sleep. In a villageor town, with people asleep in all the houses round, the Frin spend at leastpart of every night in a shifting phantasmagoria of their own and otherpeople's dreams which I find it hard to imagine. I asked an acquaintance in asmall town to tell me any dreams she could recall from the past night. Atfirst she demurred, saying that they'd all been nonsense, and only "strong"dreams ought to be thought about and talked over. She was evidently reluctantto tell me, an outsider, things that had been going on in her neighbors'heads. I managed at last to convince her that my interest was genuine and notvoyeuristic. She thought a while and said, "Well, there was a woman -- it wasme in the dream, or sort of me, but I think it was the mayor's wife's dream,actually, they live at the corner -- this woman, anyhow, and she was trying tofind a baby that she'd had last year. She had put the baby into a dresserdrawer and forgotten all about it, and now I was, she was, feeling worriedabout it -- Had it had anything to eat? Since last year? O my word, how stupidwe are in dreams! And then, oh, yes, then there was an awful argument betweena naked man and a dwarf, they were in an empty cistern. That may have been myown dream, at least to start with. Because I know that cistern. It was on mygrandfather's farm where I used to stay when I was a child. But they bothturned into lizards, I think. And then -- oh yes!" -- she laughed -- "I wasbeing squashed by a pair of giant breasts, huge ones, with pointy nipples. Ithink that was the teenage boy next door, because I was terrified but kind ofecstatic, too. And what else was there? Oh, a mouse, it looked so delicious,and it didn't know I was there, and I was just about to pounce, but then therewas a horrible thing, a nightmare -- a face without any eyes -- and huge,hairy hands groping at me -- and then I heard the three-year-old next doorscreaming, because I woke up too. That poor child has so many nightmares, shedrives us all crazy. Oh, I don't really like thinking about that one. I'm gladyou forget most dreams. Wouldn't it be awful if you had to remember themall!" Dreaming is a cyclical, not a continuous activity, and so in smallcommunities there are hours when one's sleep-theater, if one may call it so,is dark. REM sleep among settled, local groups of Frin tends to synchronize.As the cycles peak, about five times a night, several or many dreams may begoing on simultaneously in everybody's head, intermingling and influencing oneanother with their mad, inarguable logic, so that (as my friend in the villagedescribed it) the baby turns up in the cistern and the mouse hides between thebreasts, while the eyeless monster disappears in the dust kicked up by a pigtrotting past through a new dream, perhaps a dog's, since the pig is ratherdimly seen, but is smelt with enormous particularity. But after such episodescomes a period when everyone can sleep in peace, without anything excitinghappening at all. In Frinthian cities, where one may be within dream-range ofhundreds of people every night, the layering and overlap of insubstantialimagery is, I'm told, so continual and so confusing that the dreams cancelout, like brushfuls of colors slapped one over the other without design; even

one's own dream blurs at once into the meaningless commotion, as if projectedon a screen where a hundred films were already being shown, their soundtracksall running together. Only occasionally does a gesture, a voice, ring clearfor a moment, or a particularly vivid wet dream or ghastly nightmare cause allthe sleepers in a neighborhood to sigh, ejaculate, shudder, or wake up with agasp. Frin whose dreams are mostly troubling or disagreeable say they likeliving in the city for the very reason that their dreams are all but lost inthe "stew," as they call it. But others are upset by the constant oneiricnoise and dislike spending even a few nights in a metropolis. "I hate to dreamstrangers' dreams!" my village informant told me. "Ugh! When I come back fromstaying in the city, I wish I could wash out the inside of my head!" EVEN ONOUR PLANE, young children often have trouble understanding that theexperiences they had just before they woke up aren't "real." It must be farmore bewildering for Frinthian children, into whose innocent sleep enter thesensations and preoccupations of adults accidents relived, griefs renewed,rapes reenacted, wrathful conversations with people fifty years in the grave.But adult Frin are ready to answer children's questions about the shareddreams and to discuss them, defining them always as dream, though not asunreal. There is no word corresponding to "unreal" in Frinthian; the nearestis "bodiless." So the children learn to live with adults' incomprehensiblememories, unmentionable acts, and inexplicable emotions, much as do childrenwho grow up on our plane amid the terrible incoherence of civil war or intimes of plague and famine; or, indeed, children anywhere, at any time.Children learn what is real and what isn't, what to notice and what to ignore,as a survival tactic, a means of staying alive. It is hard for an outsider tojudge, but my impression of Frinthian children is that they mature early,psychologically; and by the age of seven or eight they are treated by adultsas equals. As for the animals, no one knows what they make of the human dreamsthey evidently participate in. The domestic beasts of the Frin seemed to me tobe remarkably pleasant, trustful, and intelligent. They are generally welllooked after. The fact that they share their dreams with their animals mightexplain why the Frin use animals to haul and plow and for milk and wool, butnot as meat. The Frin say that animals are more sensitive dream-receivers thanhuman beings, and can receive dreams even from people from other planes.Frinthian farmers have assured me that their cattle and swine are deeplydisturbed by visits from people from carnivorous planes. When I stayed at afarm in Enya Valley the chicken-house was in an uproar half the night. Ithought it was a fox, but my hosts said it was me. People who have mingledtheir dreams all their lives say they are often uncertain where a dream began,whether it was originally theirs or somebody else's; but within a family orvillage the author of a particularly erotic or ridiculous dream may be all tooeasily identified. People who know one another well can recognize thesource-dreamer from the tone or events of the dream, its style. But after all,it has become their own as they dream it. Each dream may be shaped differentlyin each mind. And, as with us, the personality of the dreamer, the oneiric I,is often tenuous, strangely disguised, or unpredictably different from thedaylight person. Very puzzling dreams or those with powerful emotional affectmay be discussed on and off all day by the community, without the origin ofthe dream ever being mentioned. But most dreams, as with us, are forgotten atwaking. Dreams elude their dreamers, on every plane. It might seem to us thatthe Frill have very little psychic privacy; but they are protected by thiscommon amnesia, as well as by doubt as to any particular dream's origin, andby the obscurity of dream itself. And their dreams are truly common property.The sight of a red and black bird pecking at the ear of a bearded human headlying on a plate on a marble table and the rush of almost gleeful horror thataccompanied it -- did that come from Aunt Unia's sleep, or Uncle Tu's, orGrandfather's, or the cook's, or the girl next door's? A child might ask,"Auntie, did you dream that head?" The stock answer is, "We all did." Whichis, of course, the truth. Frinthian families and small communities areclose-knit and generally harmonious, though quarrels and feuds occur. The