A Spishy Splashy Day in Indy.

 I'm sitting in my apartment, windows open, listening to the Indianapolis International Violin Competition on PBS.  I hear the rain on the streets and the sound of tires swishing through puddles on North Delaware. It is 61 degrees and cloudy and foggy outside.  

 I recognize this scene from childhood. Something I read. Dickens? Singer? Aunt Alice?

Earlier I drove out to the West Side to get some supplies for an art project that I thought up  in bed last night. This involved buying paint and glaze and 'stealing' fabric samples. 

At Joanne's Fabrics, near each bolt of fabric, there  is a plastic bag of small swatches. Like paint sample cards in Home Depot.  I collected maybe 35 different swatches. I guess technically this is not stealing.  Obversely, come to think of it, one could say, I guess technically this is stealing. The fact that I did it  surreptitiously,  furtively, sneakily may be considered implied interior commentary. But I did buy some lovely expensive fabric. In the wilderness of my mind, that compensates.

Is this an ethical dilemma?

Should I go with Aquinas, who wrote,  "It is not theft, properly speaking, to take secretly and use another's property in a case of extreme need: because that which he takes for the support of his life becomes his own property by reason of that need."

*Somewhere somebody said Art is Life”, so that seems to make it okay with Aquinas.

Or the Quran, which says, "The hand (of the thief) should be cut off for (the theft of) a quarter of a Dinar or more.

Today's value of a Dinar, in US dollars, is 0.00086 which is rather trifling for a chopped off hand. But, of course, the point is that the value is not the point; but the act, the intention is what condemns?

Blah, blah, blah. Camels on the head of a needle, etc. Sophistry, after a while, gets boring, right? Even for the most self-absorbed Sophist. Maybe I should turn off that violin music now.

As far as the ethical dilemma, here I sit with a pocket full of patches, feeling not the least bit guilty.

Moving on...

Earlier, 45 minutes from home, thinking about stopping at Home Depot, I became sure I had left the Chicken with Rice cooking on Hi. I could almost smell it. Internal panic. Maybe I did turn it off, but rack my brain as I might, I couldn't picture the moment when I clicked that burner off. I couldn't hear the sound of that click.  

I went the obvious route. The pan burned, smoke filled the apartment, the kitchen caught fire. Soon the apartment was filled with flames. The unfortunate part, the whole apartment building burned to the ground, killing all inhabitants and I lost my new electronic play-pretties.. The worst part, Linda's dog and cat burned to death, trapped by the smoke and flames. A lot like having an auto accident while chauffering someone else's kids in your car. Nothing for it but suicide. No redemption. For a nanosecond the thought of striking a bargain with you know who made a flitting shadow in the vicinity of my mind, but I fought it off by picturing a giant Buddha filling my head.

Forty--five minutes of dread, visions of firetrucks, dirty looks from homeless neighbors. I started scanning the rooftops in the East at Speedway and sniffing the air from downtown at Indiana Avenue.

On PBS the violin was playing Sonata No. 1 in F minor, Op. 80- S Prokofiev, A heavy, dark piece, and the violinist was an Australian woman named Suyeon Kang. For me, at the moment, it evoked visions of Rome in flames. Hell on North Delaware Street.

The apartment did not burn, Linda's animals did not die at my hands and I gave myself the rest of the day off. Hence this squib. I have a headache from all this concentration, thus, the end.

* Parts I made up to satisfy the argument.