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The gallery

Our surreal blogger explores a bloodless porcelain world, bathed in ivory light in the latest from Through the K hole.

The shimmering white terrain stretched out in front of him, bleached unbroken pumice bathed in ivory light.

In the foreground there were shallow valleys and the pallid landscape curled up and rolled back on itself. He inhabited a bloodless porcelain world and his only sense of movement came from the changing position of his body. He belonged to a universe with no edge, no horizon line and no external point of reference, it rounded and rounded and rounded, always bringing him back to the same point no matter which route he took. He knew the landscape intimately, because it was all he had.

In the art-gallery the GP stood and watched the little insect trying to make its way across the piece of marble sculpture. He was lucky enough, unlike the fly, to able to take a step back and contemplate the whole, to take it all in, in a single sweep of conscious awareness.

The work was full of narrative and frozen pathos and dripped with meaning. The differences in perspective between himself and the insect reminded him of the essential difference between generalists and specialists, between himself and his hospital colleagues.

He rolled up his gallery brochure and put it into his back pocket. Unlike the little fly, who he left crawling across the surface, he was able to move onto the next exciting piece.

Written in response to: A plethora of partialists

Kevin Hinkley is a GP in Aberdeen.

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