Eccentric, Languid Thoughts

"When people encountered them years later ... there was an aura about them.  You could not put your finger on it, but you knew these women shared secret lagoons of knowledge.  Secret codes and lore and lingo stretching back into that fluid time before air conditioning dried up the rich, heavy humidity that used to hang over the porches... drenching cotton blouses, beads of sweat tickling the skin, slowing people down so the world entered them in an unhurried way.  A thick stew of life that seeped into the very blood of people, so that eccentric, languid thoughts simmered inside.  Thoughts that would not come again after porches were enclosed, after the climate was controlled, after all windows were shut tight, and the sounds of the neighborhood were drowned out by the noise of the television set.

...

But Sidda was tired of being vigilant, alert, sharp.  She longed for porch friendship, ... the unplanned improvisational laziness.  She wanted to soak the words time management out of her lexicon.  She wanted to hand over, to yield, to let herself float down into the uncharted beautiful fertile, musky swamp of life, where creativity and eroticism and deep intelligence dwell."

Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood 
Rebecca Wells