When I was sixteen and fascinated by defining my world by arranging the files on my computer, I made a small purgatory directory just beneath my writer’s work desk (C:\>Mine\Files\Creating\Writing\Workdesk\Purgatory). I thought I’d throw in everything I started to write but never finished; everything that needed revision and never got revised. I imagined that in ten year’s time, no matter how many full works of fiction I had produced, in the very least I’ll have a directory chuck-full of wonderful things: ideas brilliant but never really explored, terrains too bizarre to venture in, bad fiction, poetry that stinks, all these gems, overlooked in their time but ready to be discovered. A purgatory.

It’s kind of disheartening to see how empty it really is.

The genius sits or lays on an Asian rug. He dreamed it up last night, its rich fabric, its outlandish colors and the shapes they made. They look Turkish to him, like the Nargilla he is smoking – elaborate and musky and strong-tasting.

“Pencil,” he commands. A pencil appears in his hand. It was always there.

“Paper,” he says. The symmetries and proportions of the room bend and flex, and then there is a wad of pages, crisp, not white, old papers like the ones used for old books that smell like books.

He thinks of war for a moment. He thinks about a man who hurt him. He wills those thoughts away and others come. In his mind while it wanders armies of men come into existence and leave it, plots tangle and untangle, market squares and back alleys and deserted beaches rise and descend. The din of the things in his mind can almost be heard in the quiet of the room — the cackling of the charcoal on the water-pipe and the minute noise of worlds born and destroyed.

At last he finds what he was looking for. His eyes focus. As he inhales, the room quietens. Even the piece of charcoal seems to burn with bated breath. He looks at his hand and moves his fingers: the pencil dances with them. He looks at the paper in his other hand. He puts his hands closer together.

As the pencil nears the paper, it hums.