(aka motomynd)
It seems fitting that my internet went out as I was attempting to write this. I was drawn into the Moristotle family by accident, spent most of my time wondering if I fit in as anything more than the proverbial red-headed stepchild, and now an accident was preventing my properly saying goodbye.
Over the years, Moristotle has become an amazing literary amalgamation that I hope somehow survives and evolves and gains more respect even as you, Morris, move on to other uses of your time. When I was allegedly gainfully employed in the magazine industry, I worked with various publishing houses across the country, but I never knew a group with more talent spread across a wider array of interests and perspectives than I came to know at Moristotle. I hope that you, Morris, and everyone involved, take great pride in what you have been part of.
There is the heavy Yale connection dating back to college days for some of you, but other than that I don’t know how most people came to know of and be involved with Moristotle. In my case, I still find it ironic that someone such as myself, being almost maniacally devoted to avoiding screen time, was drawn into the online Moristotle web through an accidental meeting.
When I used to live in the Hillsborough area of North Carolina, my overall favorite place to spend time was the Historic Occoneechee Speedway Trail, a former NASCAR dirt track with great appeal to those interested in the history of the sport – if you have access to Peacock, you can find the Dale Earnhardt Jr. “Lost Speedways” episode about the racing history of Occoneechee Speedway. But the true appeal of the place – to me at least – was the ideal running and walking surface provided by the almost perfectly flat, soft dirt of the long-abandoned track.
A few days later, a mysterious email popped up in my inbox, with a link to an article about the chance meeting on a blog called Moristotle. My reaction was somewhere between OMG and WTF. On the one hand, it was flattering that a citizen journalist found something about me interesting enough to write about. On the other hand, as a former journalist, I was aghast that someone was walking around interviewing people without first identifying himself as a journalist, publishing interviews without first seeking permission, and that he had ferreted out enough information from the conversation to be able to track me online. Yikes!
Looking back, it was a wonderful introduction that ultimately lured me into publishing many pieces on Moristotle & Co., where I have been privileged to “meet” online so many interesting and talented people over the years. It also instilled in me the importance of using an alias and being cautious about revealing personal information when chatting with strangers I met in the woods – no matter how magnificent their dog might be.
As I have jested and jousted with you many times over the years, Morris, I’m still of the personal opinion that people are better served by going for more walks in the woods than by blogging about going for walks in the woods and thereby limiting their time to go for more walks in the woods. But, if I hadn’t been going for my walk and run in the woods the morning we met, and if you hadn’t been looking for something to blog about, that one meeting is all we would have had. So I thank you for what you and Moristotle the blog have brought to my life these many years, and I hope you find time for more walks now that you are blogging less.
| Copyright © 2023 by Paul Clark |
Paul, please accept my apologies for so cravenly, naively “walking around interviewing people without first identifying [my]self as a journalist, publishing interviews without first seeking permission.”
ReplyDeleteIn my poor defense, first, I honestly wasn’t thinking then of myself as a journalist, and I don’t think I am now either, really.
Second, I think I felt that I wrote of our encounter with sufficiently scant information about you to absolve me of revealing compromising information about you.
And third, you have evidently invested yourself in our enterprise (whether journalism, art, play, or whatever else it might be) enough to allow yourself now, this very day, to take it upon yourself to be the one to reveal that that “photographer who marveled at Siegfried and asked was the 1992 Volvo in the parking lot ours” was none other than yourself!
Paul, it has been an honor and a pleasure to read your very interesting, and often very unusual work. Reading about some guy, going home with his son, just thinking about how he might have had to whack some dirtbag in a parking lot, and I was hooked. Your contributions will be sorely missed!
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