At the moment, I’m watching many people younger than I oversimplifying the life of Muhammad Ali. TV is often awash in glaring generalities.

I’m also having a devil of a time with this blog. Lately I’m stuck in a blogging rut. I use blogs as warm-ups for more challenging activities, oh, like, maybe the conclusion of a first draft of a relatively modern western novel called Cowboys Come Home.

This eludes me. I don’t feel sufficiently inspired. I want to watch TV, or, better yet, read a novel that will inspire me to keep writing my own. I want to play my guitar. I need some trigger to get me going.

I’m already thinking about the next novel, for chrissakes. My thoughts run wild but disorganized. I’m a lone molecule of water, plummeting down rapids, with no specific idea of where I’m going, just a general direction. The sea! I may be stalled behind dams, and rushed to create electricity. I may evaporate and wind up being a snowflake or ping-pong-ball-sized hail.

That’s the hail of it.

But there is no winding up for the molecule of water. It gets rushed down the rapids, squeezed through the intestines, flushed down the toilet, poured into bottles and down throats, hoisted into clouds and dropped from dizzying heights, but it is invincible and pure, no matter what circulates around it.

It is eternal. Not eternal life. The molecule is blissfully unenlivened.

Would I, composed of many molecules, trade places with a single one? It’s worth pondering, and, more importantly, it serves the purpose of getting this godforsaken blog done.

              Most of my books are available here, in Kindle and print editions.

              The following links are for the print editions.

              Forgive Us Our Trespasses is a crime novel about corruption in high places, or at least as high as places get in South Carolina. Dad’s a monstrous crook. Kids are on drugs. An improbable rise and calamitous fall, written just in time for the Age of Trump.

              Longer Songs is my collection of short stories, all expanded from songs I’ve written. Try them. You like them.

              Crazy of Natural Causes, set in Kentucky, is a fable on the absurdity of life, told through a football coach who loses everything and finds ways to cope. Most of the time, it’s Jesus. Sometimes it’s weed. Chance Benford just tries to get along.

              The Intangibles is set in the 1960s, with desegregation, civil rights, bigotry and upheaval all around and a high school football team at the center.

              The Audacity of Dope is a freewheeling tale of an unlikely hero and his girlfriend leading the Feds on a wild chase across the country. Riley Mansfield is a pot-smoking songwriter. Melissa Franklin is a schoolteacher ready for a change.

              My sportswriting is mainly on display at montedutton.com. Follow me on Twitter @montedutton, @hmdutton (writing), and/or @wastedpilgrim (a bit more irreverent and philosophical). I’m on Facebook at Monte.Dutton and Instagram at TUG50.