What is Prozzitry
When you pick this book up and sit down to read you will wonder as to what this Prozzitry is supposed to be. This question will, of course, be answered by the pieces as you read and reflect on them, however, still you would have liked the author to have said something that offers some form of definition of the genre of writing, which I am calling Prozzitry, that will help you enjoy it better.
Prozzitry is a new genre of writing that I started writing while at university studying literature. I wrote a lot of these, initially calling them, The Blue Songs of Solitude where an author always resides listening in and out.
I never thought and still do not do, that writing or art is a so called ‘democratic’ thing. Here the author must always be on his own for he does not live in dormitories of communities rather lives in his own loneliness, his own solitude even when in and among people and their festivities, fiestas and fetes.
Writing takes place, the most fundamental part of it, in this solitude and this must always be the ocean on whose shore the author must always take a walk and listen out. An author, a poet is a living iceberg most of which stays outside the public domain spread and spreading deeper and wider receiving the beats, pulses and rhythms of life’s continual elaboration and there the connections are formed, branches and leaves are spread and roots and antennas are directed deeper, wider, broader as far as possible so that he can come up with something to offer.
This living, thus, is a business of singing the soul of solitude and one must not complain about it. When one is sitting at a vacant theatre wishing to listen to the orchestra of silence played out over the space and on the flow of air and wind how must one then complain about this solitude!
The idea I was trying out was to write a genre of creative writing that tries to create an areal fiction by injecting it with a great deal of poetry, fairytale, a childlike playfulness, fantasy, myths, ample imagination and using science as a little salt and sweet to add some electromagnetism.
In this we take the premise that holds the view that in an infinite domain of this Universe with infinite numbers of perpetually changing variables everything and anything is logically possible and the indicator for measuring statistical probabilities must thus not use a hundred but infinite! For it is logically possible for us to start a Humanity Festival in every little village, every little town, every little city on this earth, from Palestine to Edinburgh, from Boston to Redhill from Whitechurch to Alabama, from Dhaka to Shanghai, from Jerusalem to Nairobi. And thus it is probable if only we believe in its possibility first.
I wrote a great deal of these in the university days which, unfortunately, got all lost a long time ago and in the process of writing a whole range of things, Prozzitries got neglected until recently when I started writing them again. And here they are in a collection.
This is fiction and thus things are imaginary, however, like all other genres of creative imaginative fictions, there are things in these pieces which might have germinated from real life experiences but they are not by any means a reproduction of memories but a creative recrafting of them so to suit the purpose of any particular piece.
Now, one little point about the voice in the Speaker: the Speaker is a fictitious ‘I’ and it might, at times, share similar opinions or thoughts with the author, but this ‘I’ is not the Author himself. This ‘I’ is an imaginary fictitious being speaking to a fictitious imaginary reader who was expected to fit into that character and read and respond to the speaker in whatever way he or she can.
Thereby this You to whom this I is speaking is also a fictitious character that will have to be accepted by the reader who then will have to frame themselves into the shoes of the ‘You’ to whom the I is speaking to and these two now form the theatre of this play which often is a monologue.
Here the Speaker becomes an invisible voice when the reader reads the piece and by doing so almost forces the Speaker to become the ‘You’ by forcing you to become ‘him’ or ‘her’!
Thus this fiction is to force the reader to get out of themselves and experience these realities and their unfoldings in territories and terminologies that are not their everyday domain.
This fiction is not meant to be sweet and chatty but serious and deep and meant to take you to places where you would normally not venture out. This is not the fiction of laid back reading but an active work of imagination.
Whether they succeed or not is a different matter but at least this is the aim. Prozzitry denies the dictionaries of thoughts and ideas (ideonaries), words (dictionaries) and of pictures (pictionaries).
A lot of people talk about clichés as if words are clichés, words are not so: thought out thoughts are, taught out ideas are, postered images are, fed and drunk in cultural dosages are and trained and crafted in ways and means of designed creativities are!
Prozzitry is not any of this; at least, it tries not to be so.
The author hopes that this work offers you a good, active and enjoyable experience of reading: reading as gardening of thoughts, reading as ploughing the mind-land, reading as learning to play a piano or a violin of your imagination, reading as a means to liberate yourself from the comfort zones of safety, predictability and defined, designed and distilled in diction and daze hollow-gram of a pointlessness.
Reading as if you are capable of rising to risk and try touching the beauty’s exuberance and sing the delightful lights and darkness of the truth and in the process have a great uplifted spirit that soars in the areal liberate state of mind where you command the body, mind, soul and their togetherness in the spirit that tells you to sing and dance your utter and sheer humanity and celebrate its abounding expressive magnanimity.
Munayem Mayenin
London
June 2008
Briony Says
This little group of children play inside this hall in a circle on the wooden floor where the golden brown colour of the wood glistens like smiling lights on the face of a happy golden brown ocean and these children float on it with their voices falling like invisible waves. Their teacher, standing tall in her red hair and black shirt and creamy grey jeans at the middle, speaks softly. She is playing with them Simon says. Simon says: Touch your nose and immediately all the noses are arched by the fingers.
As soon as I hear Simon says I hear Briony says! I always hear Briony says! No one thinks about Briony when they play Simon says. Well, no one even thinks about Simon either when they play Simon says! Simon does not say anything for he has never anything to say for poor Simon got robbed off his voice!
For how do we know what Simon says! We never ask what he is going to say! We just pretend that we know what he might say! But Simon, if we are imagining him saying, would ask us to do better things than just touch our nose or bend our knees! He could say: Get up on your feet and walk like ants and then go searching the wood!
He might say: Dig the earth and see what darkness is laid beneath the earth where lights never reach. He might say: Close your eyes and see whether you could still figure out the shapes of the lights or close your eyes and see whether you could let this face of the most beautiful thing you know disappear and see whether actually you could!
He might say: Instead of staying stuck at your sofa, why not get up and go and walk outside! He might say: Instead of zombie-staying on the train or glue-stacking on the tube with silence as your staccato twin sister or on the bus dazed by unappreciated lights or wherever being dislocated, why not speak to the strangers! Why not break the wii fit and take your family and play made up cricket games where even the two year old has a stake to play!
But we do not listen to what Simon might say let alone listen to what Briony might say. For we are all into Simon for we think Simon is Simple! Simon is simple because of our poverty, not his! If we wanted to Simon could beat Einstein or Marie Currie or Shakespeare or Monet or Mozart for that matter.
But I will tell you what Briony might say, she would tell you about the most beautiful things you may think of but, only you cannot think of, for she comes from the land of Misticious Mythsonium where everything is possible, everything is probable and everything is as real as you make them to be. If you think a shape that has no volume or area can exist then it does! You do not believe me! Where is your mind! What shape is it? What is the area of your mind? What is the volume of it? Do you know!
Now, Misticious Mythsonium is a place that produced Briony with a great great imagination that takes you places and here Briony is not your Simon, Briony is as good as it gets to a human, and she would tell you——–
Let’s play Briony says!
Briony says: Imagine that the rug beneath your feet is the magic carpet and now take me somewhere!
Where are you going to take her! You do not know for she will not let you take her to the wii fit or wee computer or wii lethargico legsitlegit! Take her somewhere! Don’t dare thinking about Ibiza or Pizza Hut!
Can you? Why not!
Take her to a place where people smile as butterflies do, where people shake hands as the bees do, where people walk light like crickets do, where people know their neighbours like the pigeons do, where people know people’s names like the teachers know the names of their students.
But you do not know any such place, do you?, for they are not on the telly or radiolly or paperelly! How do you take her to a place that you do not know!
Briony might say: What if I take you to a place where you spend hours walking and not getting tired or worried about your safety or your house being burgled or car being vandalised and people are minding their own business yet connected with an invisible muslin thread so that they are not scared and absolutely at liberty! But you would not want to go there for it is not in your neighbourhood! It is not in your country!
Briony says: Take off your hands from that cake tin! This tin is filled with cakes that are from Tesco! They are cold, they are dried and they have no aroma in them at all. They have no taste but you eat them like a machine anyway.
Briony says: Bake your own cake and I want a piece of it! But you do not have a recipe book! Briony says: So what! Why not make your own? She will even help you with one or two ideas! Oh no! You would rather have Julia Bucklebeaglebugsome’s sexy recipe book or the dvd of goddessdivaqueenofshiva showing you how to bake a cake! But tell you what Briony is not going to even touch your cake and she would not even want to play for she wants you to take part in it! You are not taking part, are you? You find her patronising! Why? Remember only arrogant people get patronised! Do not be arrogant for arrogance is the cause of all the falls that have taken place in human history! Look at the bees! How hard they are at work and how delicately, how diligently they gather the sublime nectar from the offerings of the earth and how they carry humility in their little bodies and wings!
Briony is what you are not. Briony is what you do not want to be. Briony is the country that you do not know. Briony is the place that you do not believe in. Briony is like Simon you half believe and half ignore!
If Briony is the teacher in this hall she will ask the children: What is the colour you have just made up! What are you going to call it? She would have asked: What is the country you have just discovered! She would have asked: How does the galaxy look like that you have just dreamt about! She would have asked: What is the star that shines in your dreams! She would have asked: The park where you play what other animals are there that live and play there that only you can see! Briony would have said: Let’s go and try to make a shape that did not exist! Let’s go and chase up the grass or make butterfly form a balloon of floating wings or chase the colours to form a rainbow without rain!
Or better still, Briony would have got you to actually get a rainbow made of darkness, making it appear in shades and would have given you a set of alphabet and letters to write the names of these shades. She would have shown you how to go beyond Einstein’s Quantum Physics and learn how to build space crafts that can use darkness to fuel it making it light and making it possible for it to go by infinite velocity reaching anywhere in the universe in zero time! She probably would have made you make and sing a song in a language that is not your language but you have just discovered it! Briony would have got you to learn other languages to show you how beautiful they are, all of them! Briony would have shown you how beautiful these villages are on this earth like beauty spots and she would have taught you that you need not bother with passports and id cards for everyone has a name and that is good enough in this universe to your identity! Briony would have taught you how to travel and live light only carrying your eye-catches and your sensedine memories!
But like Simon, Briony is not here and you are; poor little thing sitting glued at your sofa, staring at the telly screen, feeling miserably lethargic! I give you Briony, listen to her and try to cajole yourself to stand up and imagine that you have an infinite pair of arms and you can reach any galaxy you like and this one that you just touch does not have a name! Briony says: Name it! What are you going to name it! Not England! Not Africa! Not Japan! Not Milky Way! Name it something that marks you with it! How does it look! How many light years does its diameter encompass! How many black holes or stars does it have! What are you going to call it, this new galaxy of yours! Where is it! How can we sing it into a song that makes you into a Briony!
Come on! Briony says: Pluck this galaxy and name it. Briony says she can see it on your hair now! It looks astounding and it makes you look awesome. I could hear you are humming! Briony knows you are humming for I could feel it since Briony is my country, my universe and I keep my eyes and ears open to listen to every flow of her being!
(Briony Says: Indira’s Heart by Munayem Mayenin)
The Place for the Dot
This high tide is now receding and the waters that had brought the silts and soul of the sea to the lands, now deposited the desired wealth and it is now receding; becoming a pregnant gold colour, impregnated by the land’s and people’s left over touches and, it all now flows downhill. I sit beneath Westminster Bridge bridging the broken poles and pillars of my disarrayed thoughts. People are peopling the place, busy battering their cameras with photos that one day will be the only thing that remains of their past that they will look and probably will not remember the moments that they once lived.
The Romanian musician took a hold under the bridge and played beautifully and I sit listening to the music of receding river’s waves hitting the wall and the music coming from under the bridge. It is almost tangible that I sit in an arch made of the music flowing from my back and the music rising from my front: man’s and God’s, two rising over me, two arches crossing each other, place me inside their beauty’s bound. I feel part of the peace and I looked at the water hitting this wall that invited in the river forming a letter I and this I rises on each ends onto steps that rise up greened by water-fed moss forming another green I on the grey wall. I look at the waters that are now only waves rising and hitting the wall and the steps and the sounds that they make are almost like the sounds of trains when they slow down approaching stations. These waves, these sounds, these pieces of peace, in which I am a part, begin to thicken in a beautiful spread over a glistening darkness that opens up an avenue on which I now walk: in the dark looking for a train, looking for the train that runs like a rising metaphor of music crafted in motion’s flows over the silence and chandelier-darkness.
The train runs on a spread out elastic-rubber band of hours cutting an invisible snake-river over the dark-damp earth, night’s cool air and glistening dark space spreading sounds of hissing ceaselessly vibrating the spread of thick sleepy darkness spreading and rising as though knitting a wave-circled cloth of some magnificence. The only sound is the train, the only line is the train, the only motion is the train, the only awake is the train, the only movement and music is the train; the rest of the world is the celestial festival of darkness. The sky non existent as everything is engulfed in an eclipse of dark. In the absence of lights the matters that move away against the train’s speed look deeper shades of dark thus villages, trees and the vegetation appear darker art works over a another dark canvas all standing static and still.
This still that drank silence till the train appears with its speedy running forward with the direction of ahead in its driver’s sleepy head. The dark is the firefly-dance of a different kind of lights. The air seems like air-aqua: cool and almost silk-moist on the face. I sit by the window let the speed-flown air comb my hair that flows backwards, a dark-hair spring over my dark head; I keep looking out where dark moves against dark almost like two dark lines travelling against each other and they meet, greet and says good bye at the same time. The window appears a connecting port hole and I look through the darkness deeply bewitched by the magic of this expressive delights of things as they are and in which this silence knits this peace, pieces of which fit in so beautifully, almost like a lower case i where the dot stands floating over the main little line of the letter! I drink the pieces at this window as though I was the Sub Saharan Desert sands and feel a burning desire to join in the pieces of the peace being the dot over the body of the lower case letter i and fit perfectly beautifully.
I was at that point in time, Dhaka bound, on the intercity train that ran like poetry of motion’s signature signed in by motion’s glorious flowing ink in the dark slate through the countryside night-ride where night was what beauty might be: a song of serenity’s awesome tree spread over the horizon. The whole sky is eaten away into this dark tree that now holds all in a serengeti of beautiful darkness.
Darkness flows down over the river as the clouds thickens over head and the music now has stopped. I keep looking at the waters hitting the wall still making these beautiful sounds making music that rises and embraces me like a sonar vine. I still think of the train that runs on a spread out elastic-rubber band of hours cutting an invisible snake-river over the dark-damp earth, night’s cool air and glistening dark space spreading sounds of hissing ceaselessly vibrating the spread of thick sleepy darkness spreading and rising as though knitting a wave-circled cloth of some magnificence. The only sound is the train, the only line is the train, the only motion is the train, the only awake is the train, the only movement and music is the train; the rest of the world is the celestial festival of darkness. The sky non existent as everything is engulfed in an eclipse of dark. In the absence of lights the matters that move away against the train’s speed look deeper shades of dark thus villages, trees and the vegetation appears darker art works over another dark canvas all standing static and still. I imagine hearing a call, a voice, a note, calling me: Come in, here is the place for the dot!
( The Place for the Dot: Indira’s Heart by Munayem Mayenin)
These are all copyrighted to Munayem Mayenin.
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Indira’s Heart Prozzitry Collection By Munayem Mayenin
Copyrights @ Munayem Mayenin, London, United Kingdom, 2008-09
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