Coming of Age in Karhide

by Ursula K. Le Guin

  research group from Mills College that traveled to the Frinthian plane torecord and study oneiric brainwave synchrony agreed that (like thesynchronization of menstrual and other cycles within groups on our plane) communal dreaming may serve to strengthen the social bond. They did notspeculate as to its psychological or moral effects. From time to time a Frinis born with unusual powers of projecting and receiving dreams -- never onewithout the other. The Frin call such a dreamer whose "signal" is unusuallyclear and powerful a strong mind. That strong-minded dreamers can receivedreams from non-Frinthian humans is a proven fact. Some of them apparently canshare dreams with fish, with insects, even with trees. A legendary strong mindnamed Du Ir claimed that he "dreamed with the mountains and the rivers," buthis boast is generally regarded as poetry. Strong minds are recognized evenbefore birth, when the mother begins to dream that she lives in a warm, amber- colored palace without directions or gravity, full of shadows and complexrhythms and musical vibrations, and shaken often by slow peaceful earthquakes-- a dream the whole community enjoys, though late in the pregnancy it may beaccompanied by a sense of pressure, of urgency, that rouses claustrophobia insome. As the strong-minded child grows, its dreams reach two or three timesfarther than those of ordinary people, and tend to override or co-opt localdreams going on at the same time. The nightmares and inchoate, passionatedeliria of a strong- minded child who is sick, abused, or unhappy can disturbeveryone in the neighborhood, even in the next village. Such children, therefore, are treated with care; every effort is made to make their life oneof good cheer and disciplined serenity. If the family is incompetent oruncaring, the village or town may intervene, the whole community earnestlyseeking to ensure the child peaceful days and nights of pleasantdreams. "World-strong minds" are legendary figures, whose dreams supposedlycame to everyone in the world, and who therefore also dreamed the dreams ofeveryone in the world. Such men and women are revered as holy people, idealsand models for the strong dreamers of today. The moral pressure onstrong-minded people is in fact intense, and so must be the psychic pressure. None of them lives in a city: they would go mad, dreaming a whole city'sdreams. Mostly they gather in small communities where they live very quietly, widely dispersed from one another at night, practicing the art of "dreamingwell," which mostly means dreaming harmlessly. But some of them become guides, philosophers, visionary leaders. There are still many tribal societies on theFrinthian plane, and the Mills researchers visited several. They reported thatamong these peoples, strong minds are regarded as seers or shamans, with theusual perquisites and penalties of such eminence. If during a famine thetribe's strong mind dreams of traveling clear down the river and feasting bythe sea, the whole tribe may share the vision of the journey and the feast sovividly, with such conviction, that they decide to pack up and startdownriver. If they find food along the way, or shellfish and edible seaweedson the beach, their strong mind gets rewarded with the choice bits; but ifthey find nothing or run into trouble with other tribes, the seer, now called"twisted mind," may be beaten or driven out. The elders told the researchersthat tribal councils usually follow the guidance of dream only if otherindications favor it. The strong minds themselves urge caution. A seer amongthe Eastern zhud-Byu told the researchers, "This is what I say to my people: Some dreams tell us what we wish to believe. Some dreams tell us what we fear. Some dreams are of what we know though we may not know we knew it. The rarestdream is the dream that tells us what we did not know." Frinthia has been opento other planes for over a century, but the rural scenery and quiet lifestylehave brought no great influx of visitors. Many tourists avoid the plane underthe impression that the Frin are a race of "mindsuckers" and"psychovoyeurs." Most Frin are still farmers, villagers, or town-dwellers, butthe cities and their material technologies are growing fast. Thoughtechnologies and techniques can be imported only with the permission of theAll-Frin government, requests for such permission by Frinthian companies andindividuals have become increasingly frequent. Many Frin welcome this growth

  of urbanism and materialism, justifying it as the result of the interpretationof dreams received by their strong minds from visitors from other planes. "People came here with strange dreams," says the historian Tubar of Kaps, himself a strong mind. "Our strongest minds joined in them, and joined us withthem. So we all began to see things we had never dreamed of. Vast gatheringsof people, cybernets, ice cream, much commerce, many pleasant belongings anduseful artifacts. 'Shall these remain only dreams?' we said. 'Shall we notbring these things into wakeful being?' So we have done that." Other thinkerstake a more dubious attitude toward alien hypnogogia. What troubles them mostis that the dreaming is not reciprocal. For though a strong mind can share thedreams of an alien visitor and "broadcast" them to other Frin, nobody fromanother plane has been capable of sharing the dreams of the Frin. We cannotenter their nightly festival of fantasies. We are not on their wavelength. Theinvestigators from Mills hoped to be able to reveal the mechanism by whichcommunal dreaming is effected, but they failed, as Frinthian scientists havealso failed, so far. "Telepathy," much hyped in the literature of theinterplanary travel agents, is a label, not an explanation. Researchers haveestablished that the genetic programming of all Frinthian mammals includes thecapacity for dream-sharing, but its operation, though clearly linked to thebrainwave synchrony of sleepers, remains obscure. Visiting foreigners do notsynchronize; they do not participate in that nightly ghost-chorus of electricimpulses dancing to the same beat. But unwittingly, unwillingly -- like a deafchild shouting -- they send out their own dreams to the strong minds asleepnearby. And to many of the Frin, this seems not so much a sharing as apollution or infection. "The purpose of our dreams," says the philosopherSorrdja of Farfrit, a strong dreamer of the ancient Deyu Retreat, "is toenlarge our souls by letting us imagine all that can be imagined: to releaseus from the tyranny and bigotry of the individual self by letting us feel thefears, desires, and delights of every mind in every living body near us." Theduty of the strong-minded person, she holds, is to strengthen dreams, to focusthem -- not with a view to practical results or new inventions, but as a meansof understanding the world through a myriad of experiences and sentiences (notonly human). The dreams of the greatest dreamers may offer to those who sharethem a glimpse of an order underlying all the chaotic stimuli, responses, acts, words, intentions, imaginings of daily and nightly existence. "In theday we are apart," she says. "In the night we are together. We should followour own dreams, not those of strangers who cannot join us in the dark. Withsuch people we can talk; we can learn from them and teach them. We should doso, for that is the way of the daylight. But the way of the night isdifferent. We go together then, apart from them. The dream we dream is ourroad through the night. They know our day, but not our night, nor the ways wego there. Only we can find our own way, showing one another, following thelantern of the strong mind, following our dreams in darkness." The resemblanceof Sorrdja's phrase "road through the night" to Freud's "royal road to theunconscious" is interesting but, I believe, superficial. Visitors from myplane have discussed psychological theory with the Frin, but neither Freud'snor Jung's views of dream are of much interest to them. The Frinthian "royalroad" is trodden not by one secret soul but a multitude. Repressed feelings, however distorted, disguised, and symbolic, are the common property ofeverybody in one's household and neighborhood. The Frinthian unconscious, collective or individual, is not a dark wellspring buried deep under years ofevasions and denials, but a kind of great moonlit lake to whose shoreseverybody comes to swim together naked every night. And so the interpretationof dreams is not, among the Frin, a means of self-revelation, of privatepsychic inquiry and readjustment. It is not even species-specific, sinceanimals share the dreams, though only the Frin can talk about them. For them, dream is a communion of all the sentient creatures in the world. It puts thenotion of self deeply into question. I can imagine only that for them to fallasleep is to abandon the self utterly, to enter or reenter into the limitlesscommunity of being, almost as death is for
us.

  URSULA K. Le GUIN SOLITUDE * An addition to "POVERTY: The Second Reporton Eleven-Soro" by Mobile Entselenne'temharyonoterregwis Leaf, by herdaughter, Serenity. MY MOTHER, A FIELD ETHnologist, took the difficulty oflearning anything about the people of Eleven-Soro as a personal challenge. Thefact that she used her children to meet that challenge might be seen asselfishness or as selflessness. Now that I have read her report I know thatshe finally thought she had done wrong. Knowing what it cost her, I wish sheknew my gratitude to her for allowing me to grow up as a person. Shortlyafter a robot probe reported people of the Hainish Descent on the eleventhplanet of the Soro system, she joined the orbital crew as back-up for thethree First Observers down on planet. She had spent four years inthe tree-cities of nearby Huthu. My brother In Joy Born was eight years oldand I was five; she wanted a year or two of ship duty so we could spend sometime in a Hainish-style school. My brother had enjoyed the rainforests ofHuthu very much, but though he could brachiate he could barely read, and wewere all bright blue with skin-fungus. While Borny learned to read and Ilearned to wear clothes and we all had antifungus treatments, my mother becameas intrigued by Eleven-Sort as the Observers were frustrated by it. All this is in her report, but I will say it as I learned it from her, which helps meremember and understand. The language had been recorded by the probe and theObservers had spent a year learning it. The many dialectical ;. variationsexcused their accents and errors, and they reported that language was not aproblem. Yet there was a communication problem. The two men found themselvesisolated, faced with suspicion or hostility, unable to form any connectionwith the native men, all of whom lived in solitary houses as hermits or inpairs. Finding communities of adolescent males, they tried to makecontact with them, but when they entered the territory of such a group theboys either fled or rushed desperately at them trying to kill them. The women, who lived in what they called "dispersed villages," drove them away withvolleys of stones as soon as they came anywhere near the houses. "I believe," one of them reported, "that the only community activity of the Sorovians isthrowing rocks at men." Neither of them succeeded in having a conversation ofmore than three exchanges with a man. One of them mated with a woman who cameby his camp; he reported that though she made unmistakable and insistentadvances, she seemed disturbed by his attempts to converse, refused to answerhis questions, and left him, he said, "as soon as she got what she camefor." The woman Observer was allowed to settle in an unused house in a "village" (auntring) of seven houses. She made excellent observations of dailylife, insofar as she could see any of it, and had several conversations withadult women and many with children; but she found that she was never askedinto another woman's house, nor expected to help or ask for help in anywork. Conversation concerning normal activities was unwelcome to the otherwomen; the children, her only informants, called her Aunt Crazy-Jabber. Heraberrant behavior caused increasing distrust and dislike among the women, andthey began to keep their children away from her. She left. "There's no way," she told my mother, "for an adult to learn anything. They don't ask questions, they don't answer questions. Whatever they learn, they learn when they'rechildren." Aha! said my mother to herself, looking at Borny and me. And sherequested a family transfer to Eleven. Sort with Observer status. The Stabilesinterviewed her extensively by ansible, and talked with Borny and even withme-- I don't remember it, but she told me I told the Stabiles all about my newstockings--and agreed to her request. The ship was to stay in close orbit, with the previous Observers in the crew, and she was to keep radio contactwith it, daily if possible. I have a dim memory of the tree-city, and ofplaying with what must have been a kitten or a ghole-kit on the ship; but myfirst clear memories are of our house in the auntring. It is half underground,

  half aboveground, with wattle-and-daub walls. Mother and I are standingoutside it in the warm sunshine. Between us is a big mudpuddle, into whichBorny pours water from a basket; then he runs off to the creek to get morewater. I muddle the mud with my hands, deliciously, till it is thick andsmooth. I pick up a big double handful and slap it onto the walls where thesticks show through. Mother says, "That's good! That's right!" in our newlanguage, and I realize that this is work, and I am doing it. I am repairingthe house. I am making it right, doing it right. I am a competent person. I have never doubted that, so long as I lived there. We are inside the house at night, and Borny is talking to the ship on the radio, because he missestalking the old language, and anyway he is supposed to tell them stuff. Motheris making a basket and sweating at the split reeds. I am singing a song todrown out Borny so nobody in the auntring hears him talking funny, and anywayI like singing. I learned this song this afternoon in Hyuru's house. I playevery day with Hyuru. "Be aware, listen, listen, be aware," I sing. WhenMother stops swearing she listens, and then she turns on the recorder. Thereis a little fire still left from cooking dinner, which was lovely pigi root, Inever get tired of pigi. It is dark and warm and smells of pigi and of burningduhur, which is a strong, sacred smell to drive out magic and bad feelings, and as I sing "Listen, be aware," I get sleepier and sleepier and lean againstMother, who is dark and warm and smells like Mother, strong and sacred, fullof good feelings. Our daily life in the auntring was repetitive. On the ship, later, I learned that people who live in artificially complicated situationscall such a life "simple." I never knew anybody, anywhere I have been, whofound life simple. I think a life or a time looks simple when you leave outthe details, the way a planet looks smooth, from orbit. Certainly our life inthe auntring was easy, in the sense that our needs came easily to hand. Therewas plenty of food to be gathered or grown and prepared and cooked, plenty oftemas to pick and rett and spin and weave for clothes and bedding plenty ofreeds to make baskets and thatch with; we children had other children to playwith, mothers to look after us, and a great deal to learn. None of this issimple, though it's all easy enough, when you know how to do it, when you areaware of the details. It was not easy for my mother. It was hard for her, andcomplicated. She had to pretend she knew the details while she was learningthem, and had to think how to report and explain this way of living to peoplein another place who didn't understand it. For Borny it was easy until it gothard because he was a boy. For me it was all easy. I learned the work andplayed with the children and listened to the mothers sing. The First Observer had been quite right: there was no way for a grown woman to learn how to makeher soul. Mother couldn't go listen to another mother sing, it would have beentoo strange. The aunts all knew she hadn't been brought up well, and some ofthem taught her a good deal without her realizing it. They had decided hermother must have been irresponsible and had gone on scouting instead ofsettling in an auntring so that her daughter didn't get educatedproperly. That's why even the most aloof of the aunts always let me listenwith their children, so that I could become an educated person. But of coursethey couldn't ask another adult into their houses. Borny and I had to tell herall the songs and stories we learned, and then she would tell them to theradio, or we told them to the radio while she listened to us. But she nevergot it right, not really. How could she, trying to learn it after she'd grownup, and after she'd always lived with magicians? "Be aware!" she would imitate my solemn and probably irritating imitation of the aunts and the biggifts. "Be aware! How many times a day do they say that? Be aware of what? They aren't aware of what the ruins are, their own history, -- they aren'taware of each other! They don't even talk to each other! Beaware, indeed!" When I told her the stories of the Before Time that Aunt Sadne and Aunt Noyit told their daughters and me, she often heard the wrongthings in them. I told her about the People, and she said, "Those are theancestors of the people here now." When I said, "There aren't any people herenow," she didn't understand. "There are persons here now," I said, but she

  still didn't understand. Borny liked the story about the Man Who Lived withWomen, how he kept some women in a pen, the way some persons keep rats in apen for eating, and all of them got pregnant, and they each had a hundredbabies, and the babies grew up as horrible monst
ers and ate the man and themothers and each other. Mother explained to us that that was a parable of thehuman overpopulation of this planet thousands of years ago. "No, it's not," Isaid, "it's a moral story." -- "Well, yes," Mother said. "The moral is, don'thave too many babies." -- "No, it's not," I said. "Who could have a hundredbabies even if they wanted to? The man was a sorceror. He did magic. The womendid it with him. So of course their children were monsters." The key, ofcourse, is the word "tekell," which translates so nicely into the Hainish word"magic," an art or power that violates natural law. It was hard for Mother tounderstand that some persons truly consider most humanrelationships unnatural; that marriage, for instance, or government, can beseen as an evil spell woven by sorcerors. It is hard for her people to believemagic. The ship kept asking if we were all right, and every now and then aStabile would hook up the ansible to our radio and grill Mother and us. Shealways convinced them that she wanted to stay, for despite her frustrations, she was doing the work the First Observers had not been able to do, and Bornyand I were happy as mudfish, all those first years. I think Mother was happytoo, once she got used to the slow pace and the indirect way she had to learnthings. She was lonely, missing other grown-ups to talk to, and told us thatshe would have gone crazy without us. If she missed sex she never showed it. Ithink, though, that her Report is not very complete about sexual matters, perhaps because she was troubled by them. I know that when we first lived inthe auntring, two of the aunts, Hedimi and Behyu, used to meet to make love, and Behyu courted my mother; but Mother didn't understand, because Behyuwouldn't talk the way Mother wanted to talk. She couldn't understand havingsex with a person whose house you wouldn't enter. Once when I was nine or so, and had been listening to some of the older girls, I asked her why didn't shego out scouting. "Aunt Sadne would look after us," I said, hopefully. I wastired of being the uneducated woman's daughter. I wanted to live in AuntSadne's house and be just like the other children. "Mothers don't scout," shesaid, scornfully, like an aunt. "Yes, they do, sometimes," I insisted. "Theyhave to, or how could they have more than one baby?" "They go to settled mennear the auntring. Behyu went back to the Red Knob Hill Man when she wanted asecond child. Sadne goes and sees Downriver Lame Man when she wants to havesex. They know the men around here. None of the mothers scout." I realized that in this case she was right and I was wrong, but I stuck to my point. "Well, why don't you go see Downriver Lame Man? Don't you ever want sex? Migisays she wants it all the time." "Migi is seventeen," Mother said drily. "Mind your own nose." She sounded exactly like all the other mothers. Men, during my childhood, were a kind of uninteresting mystery to me. They turnedup a lot in the Before Time stories, and the singing-circle girls talked aboutthem; but I seldom saw any of them. Sometimes I'd glimpse one when Iwas foraging, but they never came near the auntring. In summer the DownriverLame Man would get lonesome waiting for Aunt Sadne and would come lurkingaround, not very far from the auntring --not in the bush or down by the river, of course, where he might be mistaken for a rogue and stoned-- but out in theopen, on the hillsides, where we could all see who he was. Hyuru and Didsu, Aunt Sadne's daughters, said she had had sex with him when she went outscouting the first time, and always had sex with him and never tried any ofthe other men of the settlement. She had told them, too, that the first childshe bore was a boy, and she drowned it, because she didn't want to bring up aboy and send him away. They felt queer about that and so did I, but it wasn'tan uncommon thing. One of the stories we learned was about a drowned boy whogrew up underwater, and seized his mother when she came to bathe, and tried tohold her under till she too & owned; but she escaped. At any rate, after theDownriver Lame Man had sat around for several days on the hillsides, singinglong songs and braiding and unbraiding his hair, which was long too, and shone