Muggy Quotes

Sunlight shines beauty aglow, by the banks of the river that quietly flow. Misty rain yields comfort to a muggy night. Wind of a gentle breeze, calming the skies destine of rendering light.

How wonderful, to walk half drunk with a Lemonsoda on a muggy night like this around the gleaming slate cobblestones of Rome with someone's arm around me.

New York takes from her, sometimes. But she takes too. She takes its muggy air in fistfuls, and she packs it into the cracks in her heart.

There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas — something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.

we left about midnight and walked down the hill in silence. the night was muggy, and all around me i felt the same pressure, a sense of time rushing by while it seemed to be standing still. whenever i thought of time in puerto rico, i was reminded of those old magnetic clocks that hung on the walls of my classrooms in high school. every now and then a hand would not move for several minutes -- and if i watched it long enough, wondering if it had finally broken down, the sudden click of the hand jumping three for four notches would startle me when it came.

I have a cold mind and a warm heart, whereas most people have cold, troubled hearts and warm, muggy minds, which they mistake for sincere feelings.

I'm a good girl. I'm a nice girl. I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and brother's shit and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died,after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father ever day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a big muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "Such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

I run my hands down her bare arms. Shoulders to elbows to wrists. She has goose bumps, even in the muggy Florida night. Maybe that’s because of me. Sometimes I forget she likes me the same way I like her.

Even though your life is Rainy and muggy you can fight through it just Make sure you know what is happening And make sure you don't take to much pressure on it just shake it off!

You're thinking of revolution as a great all-or-nothing. I think of it as one more morning in a muggy cotton field, checking the undersides of leaves to see what's been there, figuring out what to do that won't clear a path for worse problems next week. Right now that's what I do. You ask why I'm not afraid of loving and losing, and that's my answer. Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work--that goes on, it adds up. It goes into the ground, into crops, into children's bellies and their bright eyes. Good things don't get lost. Codi, here's what I've decided: the very least you can do in you life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can't say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyer nor the destroyed.

No wonder, he thought, that the panhandle people were a godly lot, for they lived in sudden, violent atmospheres. Weather kept them humble. ... it was real muggy earlier, hot enough to cook a bear. Anyway, you get used a rapid weather change.

At moments, the weight of it all became palpable. It was in the air, the stress and misery. Normally, you breathed it in, without noticing it. But some days, like a humid muggy day, it had a suffocating weight of its own.

At moments, the weight of it all became palpable. It was in the air, the stress and misery. Normally, you breathed it in, without noticing it. But some days, like a humid muggy day, it had a suffocating weight of its own. Some days, this is how it felt when I was in the hospital: trapped in an endless jungle summer, wet with sweat, the rain of tears of the families of the dying pouring down.

It all started with one of those days--one of those muggy, first-of-the-summer-vacation days when everyone older and everyone younger knew what to do, but everyone in between was lost.

How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that. I'm a good girl, I'm a nice girl, I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and my brother's shit, and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.

There we go: yesterday we had the first complaints about the warm weather! “It always gets so muggy here in the Netherlands!” according to fat Bakker. Only two days ago he was still complaining about the cold. Sometimes I’d like to kill him.

In the evening, the summer haze hovers over the fields like a translucent amber blanket waiting to put the crops to bed, tucking them in sweetly before the chill of the night descends over all. The locusts buzz in the distance and the mosquitoes gather around the porch lights as we play cards and sip lemonade. It's muggy, but a comfortable kind of humid, like natures hug on your sun-kissed skin.

I waited in vain for someone like me to stand up and say that the only thing those of us who don't believe in god have to believe is in other people and that New York City is the best place there ever was for a godless person to practice her moral code. I think it has to do with the crowded sidewalks and subways. Walking to and from the hardware store requires the push and pull of selfishness and selflessness, taking turns between getting out of someone's way and them getting out of yours, waiting for a dog to move, helping a stroller up steps, protecting the eyes from runaway umbrellas. Walking in New York is a battle of the wills, a balance of aggression and kindness. I'm not saying it's always easy. The occasional "Watch where you're going, bitch" can, I admit, put a crimp in one's day. But I believe all that choreography has made me a better person. The other day, in the subway at 5:30, I was crammed into my sweaty, crabby fellow citizens, and I kept whispering under my breath "we the people, we the people" over and over again, reminding myself we're all in this together and they had as much right - exactly as much right - as I to be in the muggy underground on their way to wherever they were on their way to.

Dear Jesus, please get me out. Christ, please, please, please, Christ. If you only keep me from being killed I'll do anything you say. I believe in you and I'll tell everybody in the world that you are the only thing that matters. Please, please, dear Jesus' The shelling moved further up the line. We went to work on the trench and in the morning the sun came up and the day was hot and muggy and cheerful and quiet. The next night back at Mestre he did not tell the girl he went upstairs with at the Villa Rosa about Jesus. And he never told anybody.

It was not a physical fatigue—he went to the gym regularly and felt better than he had in years—but a draining lassitude that numbed the margins of his mind. He got up and went out to the verandah; the sudden hot air, the roar of his neighbor’s generator, the smell of diesel exhaust fumes brought a lightness to his head. Frantic winged insects flitted around the electric bulb. He felt, looking out at the muggy darkness farther away, as if he could float, and all he needed to do was to let himself go.

The island was back to its usual self, heavy with the thick heat of another summer's end, a mugginess that could be picked up in your palms and saved for a later day.

I’m in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance.

She noticed how this book was allowing her to step into two worlds: the world she was in right now, beside her mum, in her house, the air muggy from the heat of the day, and another world, the world of two children, Scout and her older brother, Jem, who lived somewhere called Maycomb, a small town in Alabama, where they'd play outside, being foolish, being . . . children. She would do anything to see life through a child's eyes again; a time when life wasn't so serious, and scary neighbors were nothing more than a fun pastime, and family just meant home.

But what if she discovers the truth? What he suspects is the truth. That he’s patchwork, a tin man, his heart stuffed with sawdust. He thinks of her waiting for him, somewhere else, an island, subtropical, not muggy, her long hair waving in the sea breeze, a red hibiscus tucked behind one ear. If he’s lucky she’ll wait till that happens, till he can get there to be with her.

This was how the end must look. No deluge, no rains of fire, no Auschwitz, no comet. This is how the world will look when God has deserted it, whoever he is. Like an abandoned house, everything coated in cosmic dust, muggy and steeped in silence. Everything living will congeal and grow mold in the light that has no pulse and therefore is dead. In this spectral light everything will crumble.

There isn’t an equation that can confirm something as self-evident (to us humans) as “muggy weather is uncomfortable” or “mothers are older than their daughters.” There has been some progress made in translating this sort of information into mathematical logic, but to catalog the common sense of a four-year-old child would require hundreds of millions of lines of computer code. As Voltaire once said, “Common sense is not so common.

The summer dresses are unpacked and hanging in the closet, two of them, pure cotton, which is better than synthetics like the cheaper ones, though even so, when it's muggy, in July and August, you sweat inside them. No worry about sunburn though, said Aunt Lydia. The spectacles women used to make of themselves. Oiling themselves like roast meat on a spit, and bare backs and shoulders, on the street, in public, and legs, not even stockings on them, no wonder those things used to happen. [...] And not good for the complexion, not at all, wrinkle you up like a dried apple. But we weren't supposed to care about our complexions any more, she'd forgotten that.

The group home is always muggy, like we live in an old shoe, smelling like corn chips mixed with roach spray. I never call the group home “home.” It’s not a home. No house where you fear for your life can be considered a home.

We arrived at Stazione Termini around 7 p.m. on a Wednesday evening. The air was thick and muggy, as if Rome had been awash in a rainstorm that had come and gone and relieved none of the dampness. With dusk scarcely an hour away, the street-lights glistened through dense halos, while the lighted storefronts seemed doused in gleaming colors of their own invention. Dampness clung to every forehead and every face. I wanted to caress his face. I couldn’t wait to get to our hotel and shower and throw myself on the bed, knowing all the while that, unless we had good air-conditioning, I’d be no better off after the shower. But I also loved the languor that sat upon the city, like a lover’s tired, unsteady arm resting on your shoulders.

Give up all the wild ideas that buzz round you like wasps. Or like bluebottles. […] Find a nice, ordinary girl, not too attractive or you’ll be jealous all the time, not too bright or you’ll be anxious all the time, not too rich or you’ll have nothing to strive for, not too original or she’ll upset people. There are plenty of them, and all of them are available to a young postman like you. Those are the terms offered.” The terrier had come to a sudden standstill, as if he had been a white gun dog on one of the estates. “You don’t live like that,” said Robin from the bed. “I don’t live at all,” replied Rosetta. “Haven’t you realized?” “Perhaps I have.” Now Robin was staring at her: momentarily still that muggy evening; for seconds rigid as the dog. Rosetta smiled. “I am the person every postman meets in the end.” “I’m a provisional postman only. I told you that clearly,” remarked Robin, starting once more to relax. “Do what I tell you. What else is there for you? Only wasps and bluebottles.

The room smells of lemon oil, heavy cloth, fading daffodils, the leftover smells of cooking that have made their way from the kitchen or the dining room, and of Serena Joy's perfume: Lily of the Valley. Perfume is a luxury, she must have some private source. I breathe it in, thinking I should appreciate it. It's the scent of pre-pubescent girls, of the gifts young children used to give their mothers, for Mother's Day; the smell of white cotton socks and white cotton petticoats, of dusting powder, of the innocence of female flesh not yet given over to hairiness and blood. It makes me feel slightly ill, as it I'm in a closed car on a hot muggy day with an older woman wearing too much face powder. This is what the sitting room is like, despite its elegance.

When I was in the street throwing a beanbag with the other children and Mr. Tanaka happened to stroll out of the seafood company, I always stopped what I was doing to watch him. I lay there on that slimy table while Mr. Tanaka examined my lip, pulling it down with his fingers and tipping my head this way and that. All at once he caught sight of my gray eyes, which were fixed on his face with such fascination, I couldn't pretend I hadn't been staring at him. He didn't give me a sneer, as if to say that I was an impudent girl, and he didn't look away as if it made no difference where I looked or what I thought. We stared at each other for a long moment-so long it gave me a chill even there in the muggy air of the seafood company. "I know you," he said at last. "You're old Sakamoto's little girl." Even as a child I could tell that Mr. Tanaka saw the world around him as it really was; he never wore the dazed look of my father. To me, he seemed to see the sap bleeding from the trunks of the pine trees, and the circle of brightness in the sky where the sun was smothered by clouds. He lived in the world that was visible, even if it didn't always please him to be there. I knew he noticed the trees, and the mud, and the children in the street, but I had no reason to believe he'd ever noticed me. Perhaps this is why when he spoke to me, tears came stinging to my eyes.

Stanley wasn’t a good downpour. Nothing wrong with a good downpour for clearing the air. Stanley was the sort of thing you needed a good downpour to clear the air of. Stanley was muggy, close, and oppressive, like someone large and sweaty pressed up against you in a tube train. Stanley didn’t rain, but every so often he dribbled on you. Dirk

IT WAS A HOT AND MUGGY DAY AS I looked up in the powder blue sky that covered the Port of San Pedro. The Bell helicopter circled above like a dragonfly in my Grandma Cholé's rose garden. I don't know if it was the unbearable humidity or the whoop- whoop- whoop of the chopper's rotor blades as they sliced through the air, but something was affecting me.

Summer Between Terms" The day's so calm and muggy I sweat tears, the summer's cloudcap and the summer's heat... surely good writers write all possible wrong-- are we so conscience-dark and cataract-blind, we only blame in others what they blame in us? (The sentence writes we, when charity wants I...) It takes such painful mellowing to use error... I have stood too long on a chair or ladder, branch-lightening forking through my thought and veins-- I cannot hang my heavy picture straight. I can't see myself...in the cattery, the tomcats doze till the litters are eatable, then find their kittens and chew off their breakable heads. They told us by harshness to win the stars. Planes, trains, lorries simmer through the garden, the reviewer sent by God to humble me ransacking my bags of dust for silver spoons-- he and I go on typing to go on living. There are ways to live on words in England-- reading for trainfare, my host ruined on wine, my ear gone bad from clinging to the ropes. I'd take a lower place, eat my toad hourly; even big frauds wince at fraudulence, and squirm from small incisions in the self-- they live on timetable with no time to tell. I'm sorry, I run with the hares now, not the hounds. I waste hours writing in and writing out a line, as if listening to conscience were telling the truth

Then I descend a flight of stairs and step outside into an already-muggy August morning. Not until I’m at the corner do I realize I left my travel mug on the kitchen counter. I decide to treat myself to an iced latte instead of going back to the apartment. These days, I spend as little time there as possible. Because numbers never lie. And two plus one equals … too many. I pull open the heavy glass door to Starbucks, noticing it’s packed. Not surprising: Seventy-eight percent of American adults drink coffee every day, with slightly more women than men consuming it regularly. And New York is the fourth-most coffee-crazed city in the country. I

The muggy afternoon rallied mosquitoes. No boat; no Tate. At dusk, she stood straight and still and silent as a stork, staring at the empty-quiet channel. Breathing hurt. Stepping out of the dress, she eased into the water and swam in the dark coolness, the water sliding over her skin, releasing heat from her core. She pulled from the lagoon and sat on a mossy patch of the bank, nude until she dried, until the moon slipped beneath the earth. Then, carrying her clothes, walked inside. She waited the next day. Each hour warmed until noon, blistered after midday, throbbed past sunset. Later, the moon threw hope across the water, but that died, too. Another sunrise, another white-hot noon. Sunset again. All hope gone to neutral. Her eyes shifted listlessly, and though she listened for Tate’s boat, she was no longer coiled.

Large-leafed plants at the edge of the jungle reflected the sun rather than soaking it up, their dark green surfaces sparkling white in the sunlight. Some of the smaller ones had literally low-hanging fruit, like jewels from a fairy tale. Behind them was an extremely inviting path into the jungle with giant white shells for stepping-stones. And rather than the muggy, disease-filled forests of books that seemed to kill so many explorers, here the air was cool and pleasant and not too moist- although Wendy could hear the distant tinkle of water splashing from a height. "Oh! Is that the Tonal Spring? Or Diamond Falls?" Wendy withered breathlessly. "Luna, let's go see!" She made herself not race ahead down the path, but moved at a leisurely, measured pace. Like an adventuress sure of herself but wary of her surroundings. (And yet, as she wouldn't realize until later, she hadn't thought to grab her stockings or shoes. Those got left in her hut without even a simple goodbye.) Everywhere she looked, Wendy found another wonder of Never Land, from the slow camosnails to the gently nodding heads of the fritillary lilies. She smiled, imagining John as he peered over his glasses and the snail faded away into the background in fear- or Michael getting his nose covered in honey-scented lily pollen as he enthusiastically sniffed the pretty flowers. The path continued, winding around a boulder into a delightful little clearing, sandy but padded here and there with tuffets of emerald green grass and clumps of purple orchids. It was like a desert island vacation of a perfect English meadow.

NAP ON A MUGGY AFTERNOON When we part, all the closeness and pleasure of our time together immediately dissolves into lonely agitation. Having shared a cool iron bed with a warm and beautiful woman, I return home and lie incapacitated on the sofa: drained, dismantled, wracked with longing and restlessness; yet somehow, despite the dismal aftereffects, it seems worth it. The Hate Poems John Tottenham

irons, ready to dip them in a bucket of extremely dirty water and dry them on the rag of a dishcloth. ‘Tomorrow is another day, as my dear old gran used to say, so comfort yourself, girls, with the fact that it can only get better.’ It had been warm, almost muggy, in the cookhouse, but the moment Maddy and Marigold followed their companions out through the open doorway they walked into a snowstorm. Maddy clutched Marigold’s arm and bawled directly in her ear, tilting her friend’s cap in order to do so. ‘Want to go to the NAAFI and write letters?’ Marigold shook her head and they dived into their hut and slammed the

I left the icebox cold of Oregon for the tropical heat of Cairns in early January 1992. As I got off the plane to catch my connecting flight to Brisbane, I found it almost difficult to breathe, it was so hot and muggy. My mind was working in funny ways. It’s just too hot here, I thought. I could never live here. Then I caught myself. Hang on a minute. What was that? Why would that even be an option, living here? I’m just coming over to see this guy. But that Cairns moment was the first time I actually thought about leaving my Oregon life behind to join Steve in his Australian one. On my final approach to Brisbane, I had an excited feeling again, a sense of coming home. It seemed like I was the only passenger eager to get off the plane. Everyone else was moving as though they were underwater. I stepped out into the airport. There was Steve, back in his khakis. It was nice to see him in those familiar shorts again, after having to bundle up in Oregon against the cold. We embraced, and I had the sense that we were one person. Apart, we weren’t whole, but together, we were okay again.

When everyone had been dispatched, he turned to Loretta, one dark eyebrow cocked, his indigo eyes twinkling with laughter. “One wife and only one wife, forever with no horizon?” Loretta’s gaze chased off, and her cheeks went scarlet. Clasping her hands behind her, she rocked back on her heels, then forward onto her toes, pursing her lips. “I told you, Hunter, I refuse to play second fiddle.” He smiled--a slow, dangerous smile that made her nerves leap. His heated gaze drifted slowly down the length of her. He grasped her arm and led her toward his lodge. “Now you will show this Comanche how good you play number one fiddle, yes?” “I--” Loretta’s mouth went as dry as dust as she tripped along beside him, her arm vised in his grip. “Surely you don’t mean right now.” Her startled gaze focused on the lodge door. “It’s not even dark yet. People are still awake. You haven’t eaten. There’s no fire built. We can’t just--” He lifted the door flap and drew her into the dark lodge. “Blue Eyes, I have no hunger for food,” he said huskily. “But I will make a fire if you wish for one.” Any delay, no matter how short, appealed to Loretta. “Oh, yes, it’s sort of chilly, don’t you think?” It was a particularly muggy evening, the kind that made clothing stick to the skin, but that hardly seemed important. “Yes, a fire would be lovely.” He left her standing alone in the shadows to haul in some wood, which he quickly arranged in the firepit. Moments later golden flames lit the room, the light dancing and flickering on the tan walls. Remaining crouched by the flames, he tipped his head back and gave her a lazy perusal, his eyes touching on her dress, eyebrows lifting in a silent question. “Do you hunger for food?” he asked her softly.

Figuring out the long word before her name took a while, and

It’s that Friday at the end of September when a storm blows in on a warm, muggy morning and it rains all day, but the rain clouds part for a crisp, bracing late afternoon and you know summer has finally lost its grasp. That Friday. It’s been one of those improbably perfect days when all the universe’s tumblers click into place. Every joke of yours kills. Everyone’s a little funnier than usual. Everyone’s a little more insightful and quick. One of those days when you feel like you’re going to be young and live forever. One of those days that feels perpetually like being at the top of the arc while you’re swinging on a swing set.

If your idleness is a complete slump, that is, indecision, fretting, worry, or due to overfeeding and physical mugginess, that is bad, terrible, and utterly sterile.

Last night, when he had been showing her how to refasten the bowline, she had feigned incompetence at the simple knot. It was a schoolgirl’s trick, but the poor, honest man had been completely deceived. He’d stood behind her, with her in the circle of his arms and take her hands to guide them through the easy motions. Heat had flushed through her, and her knees had actually trembled at his closeness. A wave of dizziness had washed through her; she had wanted to collapse on the deck and pull him down on top of her. She’d gone still in his loose embrace, praying to every god she’d ever heard of that he would know what she so hotly desired and act on it. This, this was what she was supposed to feel about the man she was joined to, and had never felt at all! “Do you understand it now?” he’d asked her huskily. His hands on hers pulled the knot firm. “I do,” she’d replied. “I understand it completely now.” She hadn’t been speaking of knots at all. She’d dared herself to take half a step backward and press her body to his. She dared herself to turn in the circle of his arms and look up into his whiskery beloved face. Cowardice paralyzed her. She could not even form words. For a time that was infinitely brief and forever, he stood there, enclosing her in a warm, safe place. All around her, the night sounds of the Rain Wilds made a soft music of water and bird and insect calls. She could smell him, a male musky smell, “sweaty” as Sedric would have mocked it, but incredibly masculine and attractive to her. Enclosed by his embrace, she felt a part of his world. The deck under her feet, the railing of the ship, the night sky above her, and the man at her back connected her to something big and wonderful, something that was untamed and yet home to her. Then he had dropped his arms and stepped back from her. The night was warm and muggy, the insects chirred and buzzed, and she heard the night call of a gnat-chaser. But it had all seemed separate from her then. Last night, as now, she knew herself for the mousy, scholarly little Bingtown woman she undoubtedly was. She’d sold herself to Hest, prostituted out her ability to bear a child for the security and position that he had offered. She’d made the deal and signed on it. A Trader was only as good as his word, so the saying went. She’d given her word. What was it worth? Even if she took it back now, even if she broke it faithlessly, she’d still be a mousy, little Bingtown woman, not what she longed to be. She could scarcely bear to consider what she longed to be, not only because it was so far beyond her but because it seemed a childishly extravagant dream. In the dark circle of her arms, she closed her eyes and thought of Althea, wife to the captain of the Paragon. She’d seen that woman dashing about the deck barefoot, wearing loose trousers like a man. She’d seen her standing by her ship’s figurehead, the wind stirring her hair and a smile curving her lips as she exchanged some sort of jest with the ship’s boy. And then Captain Trell had bounded up the short ladder to the foredeck to join them there. She and the captain had moved without even looking at each other, like a needle drawn to a magnet, their arms lifting as if they were the halves of the god Sa becoming whole again. She’d thought her heart would break with envy. What would it be like, she wondered, to have a man who had to embrace you when he saw you, even if you’d just risen from a shared bed a few hours earlier? She tried to imagine herself as free as that Althea woman, running barefoot on the decks of the Tarman.

Even though the morning started out crisp, by the afternoon the day had turned muggy and humid. Ruby and I sat in the conservatory working on her puzzle while the fans buzzed above our heads. She sighed and flicked another abandoned piece into the lid. “This

So what causes men to become violent? I’ll tell you, boredom, silly rules, muggy screws and pathetic governors. What else can we do - swallow it, wipe our mouths out. You have to fight for your rights. Not sit back and take it.

Sunday morning. The air was muggy and oppressive, bloated with the potential for rain. It was the kind of day that invited inactivity and foreboding thoughts.

20th January, 1873.—Tried to observe lunars in vain; clouded over all, thick and muggy. Came on disappointed and along the Lovu 1-1/2 mile. Crossed it by a felled tree lying over it. It is about six feet deep, with 150 yards of sponge. Marched about 2-1/2 hours: very unsatisfactory progress. [In answer to a question as to whether Dr. Livingstone could possibly manage to wade so much, Susi says that he was carried across these sponges and the rivulets on the shoulders of Chowpéré or Chumah.]

Surely you don’t mean right now.” Her startled gaze focused on the lodge door. “It’s not even dark yet. People are still awake. You haven’t eaten. There’s no fire built. We can’t just--” He lifted the door flap and drew her into the dark lodge. “Blue Eyes, I have no hunger for food,” he said huskily. “But I will make a fire if you wish for one.” Any delay, no matter how short, appealed to Loretta. “Oh, yes, it’s sort of chilly, don’t you think?” It was a particularly muggy evening, the kind that made clothing stick to the skin, but that hardly seemed important. “Yes, a fire would be lovely.” He left her standing alone in the shadows to haul in some wood, which he quickly arranged in the firepit. Moments later golden flames lit the room, the light dancing and flickering on the tan walls. Remaining crouched by the flames, he tipped his head back and gave her a lazy perusal, his eyes touching on her dress, eyebrows lifting in a silent question. “Do you hunger for food?” he asked her softly. Loretta clamped a hand to her waist. “You know, actually I am hungry. Famished! Aren’t you? What sounds good?” She threw a frantic look at the cooking pots behind him. “I’ll bet stew would strike your fancy, wouldn’t it? After traveling so far and eating nothing but jerked meat. Yes, stew would be just the thing.” Hunter’s mouth quirked. “Blue Eyes, a stew will take a very long time.” All night, if she was lucky. “Oh, not that long. It’s no trouble, really!” She made a wide circle around him toward the pots. “I make a wonderful stew, really I do. I’m sure Maiden has some roots and onions I can borrow. Just you--” Loretta leaped at the touch of his hand on her shoulder. She turned to face him, a large pot wedged between them, her hand white-knuckled on the handle. “Blue Eyes, I do not want stew,” Hunter whispered, his voice laced with tenderness. “If you hunger, we will have nuts and fruit, eh?” Loretta swallowed a lump of air. Fruit and nuts were better than the alternative. Maybe, if she ate one nut at a time…“All right, fruit and nuts.” He spread a buffalo robe beside the fire while she put the pot away and dug up a parfleche of fruit and nuts from his store of preserved edibles. Kneeling beside him, Loretta munched industriously, staring into the leaping flames, aware with every bite she took that Hunter watched her. When she reached for her fourth handful, he clamped his long fingers around her wrist. “Enough,” he said evenly. “You will sicken your gut if you eat more.” Loretta’s gut was already in sorry shape. She swallowed, trying to avoid his gaze and failing miserably. When their eyes met, she felt as if the ground fell away. There was no mistaking that look in his eye. The moment of reckoning had come.

The everyday flavour of the Scandinavian loans can be seen in these two dozen words, all of which survived into modern Standard English: anger, awkward, bond, cake, crooked, dirt, dregs, egg, fog, freckle, get, kid, leg, lurk, meek, muggy, neck, seem, sister, skill, skirt, smile, Thursday, window

compared to Cambridge—so muggy and hot with all its bricks and concrete it’s like a form of torture—summer in Hawaii is a veritable paradise.

It is darker in the woods, even in common nights, than most suppose. I frequently had to look up at the opening between the trees above the path in order to learn my route, and, where there was no cart-path, to feel with my feet the faint track which I had worn, or steer by the known relation of particular trees which I felt with my hands, passing between two pines for instance, not more than eighteen inches apart, in the midst of the woods, invariably in the darkest night. Sometimes, after coming home thus late in a dark and muggy night, when my feet felt the path which my eyes could not see, dreaming and absent-minded all the way, until I was aroused by having to raise my hand to lift the latch, I have not been able to recall a single step of my walk, and I have thought that perhaps my body would find its way home if its master should forsake it, as the hand finds its way to the mouth without assistance.

muggy

I’ve never worn leather before. But I’ve watched enough bikers and BDSM members to know that things can get muggy down south real quick. Oh, and latex. Like one of those full bodysuits. I went to a party once where everyone wore one. Things got real squeaky.

moite /mwat/ adj 1. [climat, chaleur] muggy 2. [mur, objet] damp; [peau] sweaty moiteur /mwatœʀ/ nf (de l'air) mugginess; (de la peau) sweatiness

Growing up in the South is not for the faint of heart. An enigmatic place at the best of times, it is paradoxical to the core. Finding your way through the various switchbacks and roundabouts that make up the overgrown maze of its personality can be a bewildering experience and one that often takes a lifetime, at least. Just when you think you have it solidly in your sights, it slips around a corner, leaving only the faint fragrance of a fading magnolia hanging in the muggy air. At the very moment you feel confident in its definition, it can, without warning, fashion itself into a creature of myth, sending you back to huddle over your history books and crystal balls, once again in search of the truth about this place you call home. Its a land where heart-stopping beauty and heartrending ugliness flourish in tandem, a land of kindness and hate, of ignorance and wit, of integrity, blindness, and pride.

She’s aged a decade since I last saw her, her skin faded gray, her eyes muggy. She is heartbreak come to life.

Parker stood near the pool, watching Logan drift onto the patio in all his young, radiant glory. Despite it being the last night of December, the southern air was muggy, complementing Logan’s pale, delicate features as he stood in a pair of khaki shorts and the same brown and blue striped rugby shirt he’d worn back at Soxers. The lights Parker had been stringing for the last two hours shone in his wide eyes, casting his guest in a most flattering glow.

We ordered in Chinese for dinner (we both had a fondness for MSG-laden sweet and sour pork), laughed at our fortune cookie prophecies, watched a movie, made love, and fell asleep beneath a single sheet in my queen bed, as LA was draped in a muggy heat wave.

Already, the morning was warm and muggy.

got up and went out to the verandah; the sudden hot air, the roar of his neighbour’s generator, the smell of diesel exhaust fumes brought a lightness to his head. Frantic winged insects flitted around the electric bulb. He felt, looking out at the muggy darkness farther away, as if he could float, and all he needed to do was to let himself go.

That’s right,” grumped Mr. Schultz, half-pretending.

Anesthesiologist,” I tell him. “Sì.” He smiles at me. It’s a goofy, toothy grin. His nose is large and his ears stick out, but I like how his thick black hair gets in his eyes when he tilts his head to bite into the pear. He runs a hand through it to push it back, but it doesn’t help. There is a snap as he bites through the pear’s skin, into the flesh, peeling it with his teeth. I watch his throat work as he eats. A bit of juice disappears beneath the collar of his shirt. His mother huffs, pretending exasperation, and gets him a napkin. This is Paul and Hannah’s apartment—Donato and his parents live one building over—but I can tell by how he stretches across the living room couch, how his mother directs my brother-in-law in the kitchen, that they might as well live here too. “Marie’s teaching me how to make a proper cacio e pepe,” Paul calls to me from the stove. The pot of boiling water is making the room muggy. Marie goes to prop open the front door. “You have not seen Hannah since her mamma’s funeral?” Donato asks, watching me from the couch. He has very light brown eyes, fringed with thick lashes and full, almost feminine lips that are slick and shiny from the pear juice. I can feel him assessing me. Taking in the box-dye job, the blunt haircut I managed to fit in between visits to the nursing home and my red-eye flight. It’s shorter than I wanted and feels uneven. It looks exactly the same, Guy assured me before dropping me off at the airport. “Over a year now,” I say, trying not to fidget. He raises an eyebrow, still enjoying that pear. I refuse to feel guilty. Paul had left for Italy soon after the funeral, taking Hannah with him. And I had my mother to think of, her grief was insurmountable. It affected everything. She did not want to go outside, she did not want to eat.

There was no question in my mind on that muggy August day that within less than a year - and on my father's birthday - Look Back in Anger would have opened, in what still seems like an inordinately long, sharp and glimmering summer.

She rolled down the window, just a crack, hoping the muggy late May air would be cooler than the interior of the van. Almost immediately, her nostrils were flooded with the smell of what could only be described as Satan’s BO. “Mistake! Huge error in judgment!” she gasped. Jillian rolled up the window, her hands so sweaty that her fingers actually slipped off of the handle a few times before she sealed herself inside the van.

I could close my eyes, and the sounds of the party weren't so different from those in college, but I wasn't tricking myself. The feeling in the air had changed. There was a whole world out there, beyond wherever we were gathered. It didn't matter whether it was a cramped walk-up or a tar rooftop or a weedy backyard strung with lights. How you spent your time was suddenly up to you. There were other options. Infinite, terrifying options opening up like a crevasse and no one to tell you which way to go. I think everyone was wondering, through the haze of weed and beer pong and tequila shots, whether this—right here, right now—was in fact what they were supposed to be doing. I suspected I wasn't alone in detecting a desperation in the muggy air, people laughing too loudly, drinking beer that hadn't been chilled long enough.