Section 5: Religion is a vague lowing, Any photographer will tell you the same & At the time the perpetual Latin of love kept things hidden Summary

In "Religion is a vague lowing," the narrator learns to listen rather than talk. The song's secret is its elusiveness, and women should speak softly without mumbling. The narrator is self-sufficient but always vulnerable to her feelings in relation to someone else. She starts inexactly and begins again with the next indentation. From the bus, she sees a blind woman selling carnations on Geary Street. The narrator watches Independence Day fireworks as the winter rains fall into the bay. "It was not so much monotony as a certain obsession with thought" (page 54). Adolescence is repetitive with each...