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Short Takes include random posts that sometimes arise out of a day with a bad case of writer's block. On those days, I still have to write. That's how you break out of Writer's Block: you write anyway, whether you want to or not. If you focus on your inability to write the next chapter in your next book, you only think about the problem, not what's happening with your characters. Granted, you may not write anything worth reading, but you may write something that's worth reading, just not of the quality you're looking for to put in your current book. Some of my Short Takes come out of days when I have to write, even though I don't quite feel like it. Fake it till you make it can actually work. Sometimes. 

Have you ever tried to run between the raindrops? Sometimes, when the rain is just beginning and the drops are widely dispersed—six to ten feet apart between where they land on the ground—you can almost pretend that you can do it. Run between the raindrops and avoid getting wet. 

But of course, you can’t really. At least, I can’t. I can’t speak for you. 

So I saw something interesting this morning. It began to rain and soon came down in sheets. In the remarkably short time it took for the rain to switch from a sprinkle to a downpour, I hurried from the bedroom (where I was lazing on a cloudy, retired morning) to let our little indoor/outdoor cat, Lucy, in and out of the rain. She’s smart enough to get into her little house just outside the back door on the patio if we’re not paying attention. So when I opened the door, she shot into the house like a blur of black licorice, then immediately started yelling at me for not letting her in before the rain turned into a squall. 

I picked her up and consoled her, and we looked out the back door at the rain falling on her house. The eaves, unable to contain or move the sudden deluge, overflowed and poured water down onto her house roof. 

As we stood together and watched, the rain slowed down slightly after a minute to a more moderate pace, and I saw the most remarkable thing: a tiny moth came up out of the grass ten or fifteen feet out from the door, and flew about unconcernedly, maintaining a height of a few inches above the grass. I thought I had a floater in my eye at first, but I soon saw several other moths do the exact same thing. 

It was as if they were flying between the raindrops. They weren’t big enough to keep flying if they took a direct hit from the falling droplets, so I am still puzzled and slightly in awe of their ability to fly about in a rainstorm without being knocked to the ground and drowned. Maybe they’re too inconsequential for the rain to bother. 

Then the rain stopped, and Lucy wanted to get down and to go back outside. So that’s what happened. And I’m still thinking jealously about the moths that can fly between the raindrops.