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Dr. Janet Levalley
(Sri Lanka)

Dr. Janet Le Valley is Associate Professor and Chair of Psychology and Personal Development Counselor, at American National College, Sri Lanka.  She did her Ph. D on Tibetan Buddhist development perspective from CIIS, San Francisco, CA, USA in 1993. and M. A. Sociology from University of California, Riverside, CA, USA in 1978. Notable Publications : The Naga's Child (2004), The Web of Life Imprative (2003), Naga Kanya (book in progress) e-mail : janet@ancedu.com or nagadaughter@hotmail.com visit her at : www.levalley.homestead.com

An  excerpt from
Kanya Dreaming by Dr. Janet Levalley

It is a movement meditation, her own form of t’ai qi, that she does, has done since shortly after the troubled times. There was no one to do it then, of course, no one to lay the stone circle, no one to accept the dreaming. Everyone had nightmares then. Everyone was felled by pain. No one survived the memories.
She heard the voice and was bitten. Taking in venom, she faced the dark angel, the open box of Pandora, the swinging sword of Damocles, the raging giant, the terror beneath the bridge, reptilian armies marching in feverish fury, the uncloaking of wrathful deities. She was disassembled and, with what was left to her, she fashioned tools in the flame. These she offered to Kali, whose hands clutch the severed heads of demons, and whose embrace is the salty ocean mother, the ancient flowing of rivers, the youthful exuberance of fresh springs. In the venom she is marked and she who has called her takes notice.
She walks slowly, bare feet stirring the dust gently, a corner of her sarong tracing a circle in the fine golden powder. She stoops to plant a stone, straightens to take rounded steps, stoops to plant a stone. In her rhythm, the tracing is complete. She lies down in the center of golden dust, the stones in protective witness circle about her. She hears the drumming of ancestors. She shivers with the rattle of elders.
She looks into the eyes of she who gave her birth, she who stands on coils upright, she beneath whose naked breasts a book is held. She reaches for it and accepts the reading. She sinks from this place to that one, floats and dreams.
Red eyes and jeweled daggers swirl in flames. A rider on a white horse watches from shadowed hood. Blood is seeping from a fair neck. A white stick leaps, then convulses in the throes of death.
A monkey is playing with poison, teasing his mate by carrying the deadly vial to the top of a coconut tree. Their crying baby scurries after him, but everyone falls, and in the falling is everyone’s end, except for the infant. But the Holy Virgin smiles her sorrow, and the coconuts become Vesak lanterns and the tropical forest is washed in white light.
A sofa is floating in dim yellow shadows. A man and his son are entangled there. On a hairy belly is a used needle and a bent aluminum spoon. They are covered in vomit and feces. A young girl is dutifully scrubbing them clean with one hand, while holding a book with the other. Math formulas and the faces of founding elders of social science swirl above her head. She is reciting the mantras that will one day open a door and invite her out of this place forever.
Two lovers are joined. Their ecstasy is challenged by his mother. She shakes a bloodless severed head until it nearly speaks. The teeth are rattling. Her father is rotating a gigantic wheel of fortune, on which every slot is labeled, “slutâ€