I work in an art gallery. How silly that seems. We are at war, amongst ourselves and beyond. The ideological struggle that is slowly infiltrating everything. It changes it all, shaping it in a vision that they would have us be. Ha! “Them”. It  sounds so foreign, so other, when really it is merely a different ‘us’. Anyways who ‘they’ are is not so important. I refuse to let ‘them’ be important. But they have changed everything. Or at least brought so many things into the light. I work in an art gallery. I spend my days immersed in paint and canvas while the smell of turpentine swirls around me. It is rather intoxicating. My job was never important. Not that I did not care for it. I have always loved art and its history. It is not so much about what the art is, but rather why it is made. Why those colours, those brush strokes, those shapes. That is why I chose to study it all those school years. But that is not uncommon, many girls have studied it before. It is such an ‘acceptable’ degree. Which made me loath it. Not so much at the time, but after. After all those conversations that you have. ‘Polina, what are you studying? Polina, what do you do?- Oh! How lovely. What a perfectly lovely job for such a lovely girl such as you. Your parents must be charmed.”  What girl was I? What girl did that make me?

At the gallery now, none of that matters. I stayed because I came to love it again once surrounded by the art. Morning, just didn’t seem right if the sent of oil paint wasn’t mixed with the aroma of my coffee. That is why I stayed. But that is not why I still stay when everyone else is gone, given up for what the new world allows. Art to them seems unimportant, even selfish. There is a revolution to think about. What I did was never important because everything was beautiful then and all beautiful things were allowed, invited, embraced. Art then was just a small aspect of that. Now none is allowed... occasionally it is tolerated, but either way the artists are still there. They may be underground now, but that is only fashionable. And now what they make matters because now there is a reason for beauty. Even if the walls of my gallery were to remain blank, white, they would be a testament to the times. A statement about the lack of beauty easily found. And yet hopeful, for their blankness would suggest that there are beautiful things still to be hung. Or at least that there may be a place for them. If only we were to find them worthy and position them amongst the white. Filling the space and ending the blank gaze that surrounds the space. Now that what I do is important exponentially less people seek us out.

The gallery spends so much more time empty now, but not yet blank. I am still here, to ensure that this once brilliant space does not get turned into an store house for sensible things. That is the last thing that we need and of course the only thing that we have an abundance of. In this once great city, I am the last gallery to nail its doors and shut its windowst, hanging a sign on the door with our regrets in the place of the once promising, ‘Closed, please call again’. There is now no reason to call again at most shops, as the fate the next day will be the same as today, as will the next. I can feel the weight of the hammer in my hand. But I refuse to apply it to my door. The bell jingles… I look up from where I am nailing a hook into the wall, hanging a new work. Standing before me is a beautiful man. Not tall or particularly striking, but there is something there. He has an understated, vintage, cocky, yet selfconscious air about him. This tells me that he is an artist. The mass of large soft curls that cover his head brushes his forehead and fall into his eyes. He notices me watching him and smiles revealing ceases at the corners of his vision, an abundance of time squinting into the sun in his past, or perhaps laughing. A good sign. He steps forward, hastily retrieving his hand from deep within his jacket pocket as he moves and extends it towards me. He is Vincent. I smile and look away.