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For a change, how about some stories of Shanti-Sena happenings that turned out right.....

About two hours after sunrise on the fourth (the Silence had begun), I had come down the trail from Dragon Camp kitchen, and was pausing just before emerging from the woods, when I heard some sisters yelling "Shanti-sena, Shanti-Sena". A young brother and sister were running around me, and the sister said, "Where are these Shanti-Sena people when you need them?", and made a crack about people up partying all night. I piped in immediately, "It's all of us", and the other agreed - and we all started toward the source of the noise. I had my usual feeling of "I really don't want to fuck with this now" battling my sense of duty and my curiosity for excitement. It always takes a few minutes to shift gears.

I looked around, and on the other side of the trail from the big firepit I saw a man staggering around totally nude, yelling loudly and unconnectedly, "W-O-O-O-O....oh WOW...L---K---, you are FUCKED UP....W-O-O-O-O...", and on and on like that. He was obviously on some powerful psychedelic, and what his eyes were seeing was a kaleidoscope show. He was Chicano or Middle Eastern looking, of average height but very big and husky - and as I was soon to find out - quite strong in the muscles. He was very frisky and moving suddenly, bumping into people and grabbing at their clothes, sometimes grabbing his penis and trying to jack off - scary, un-understandable, uncontrollable - not to mention disturbing the Silence.

There were about twenty or so people there, and spontaneously a few of them joined hands, others saw and joined in, and soon everyone formed into a circle around the man, saying softly, "O-o-o-o-om". A standard Shanti-Sena procedure that enough people knew and others quickly learned.

I thought of joining the circle myself, but I soon decided my part in the movie had better be roving. He would go up randomly to people in the circle and grab their arms or their clothes - I started walking around the outside reaching in with my arms getting him to let go whenever he did grab somebody. A young brother came up to him and started to beat on him violently when he went after a young sister, and I had to fend him off and calm him down, but I got a lot of vocal help from other people in the circle.

It was not that much into the morning, and I was still wearing most of my cold night clothes - a sweatshirt, two dresses, another skirt underneath, and a shawl around me. He started grabbing at my clothes, so I quickly ran back to a pile of logs and started taking things off and leaving them in a pile there. I went back a second time a few minutes later, and was soon out there bare chested, in nothing but an elastic top skirt.

All this time I was trying to do what I had figured out in various Dead Show parking lots in the past - try to make some sense out of what he was babbling, and bring him back to where he's standing. There usually are logical connections between all the disconnected ramblings, finding them is a puzzle, but they're there. He kept repeating "L---K---, you are a fuckhead...L---K---, you really did it this time...L---K---,....." (L---K--- was a name, that I'm not giving out on the World Wide Web). I asked "Who's L---K---? Is he a friend of your's? Are you L---K---? over and over. In between I was saying things like "Hear the om? It's the cosmic sound. Listen to the om." Any other thing he said I tried to ask questions about. It started to sound like he himself was L---K--- after asking a while.

I went inside the circle with him, and I was kind of herding him around, taking hold of his arm and pulling him back if he went toward someone, pulling his hands away when he grabbed at mine. Somewhere in the course of the maneuverings I had got ahold of his hand in the affectionate manner, and my other hand around his wrist with my own forearm against his so I had some leverage. Another brother came in and got ahold of him on the other side, and we were both there trying to talk him down. It was going real slow, tho - and he was a heavy thing to try to move around.

By this time a slightly grey haired brother from CALM had showed up, and he was outside the circle when he said to me, in a very gentle and comforting tone that I think he had done some practice on, "We're really gonna have to get him to CALM so we can give him some medicine". I answered back, "You're probably gonna need six wrestlers to move him there". He just stood back and, like me, started watching what was going on, waiting to see if any openings appeared.

After 15-20 minutes - I don't know what the exact stimulus was - he started walking forward with the other brother and me, letting us guide him. We started to steer him toward CALM, which was several hundred yards away. The circle of thirty or so people reduced itself to about ten and started walking behind us.

He was starting to stagger, and it was looking like we weren't going to make it to CALM, so we set our sights on a tree by Main Trail. We didn't make it that far either. He fell backwards, the two of us holding him lifted up to slow his fall, and he was then on his back on the ground with the CALM brother over him, and the circle of people around. The CALMer gave him a bit of osha root, gave him some water, started talking to him some more. Hummingbird Cowboy had showed up with his radio (he was probably who got CALM there). I walked past him and gave him a military salute like I was going off duty - and walked back to gather up my clothes and pack. I came back to watch the doctor at his art a little more, and maybe find out how the movie was going to end. I never did that day, tho - I wanted to get to the Silent Meditation.

A few mornings later I saw the brother working in Dragon kitchen, acting as normally as normal is at a Rainbow Gathering. I didn't think it would do any good to ask, "Remember me?", as gone as he was that other morning.

This all took a lot more time, and was sometimes tedious, but I think it was a lot better than what they would have done with him in Babylon - where they might have put him in restraints, certainly filled him up with something like Thorazine, and likely had flashing blue and red lights and an air of fear radiating everywhere.

A bunch of people knew what to do - call, "Shanti-Sena", form a circle around the trouble, replace the sounds of bad energy with the sound of Om. Somebody was able to control things until other people better equipped had the time to show up. There were no injuries, no damage other than one brother's shirt getting torn. Several of the people involved wanted to give me hugs later. After feeling a symphony of emotions, I went to the Silent Meditation feeling pretty damn good about myself and all those people around me.

- Butterfly Bill