Jar of Glass: Words Collected by Tamara Lopez

BOSTON Our adventures continued the next day awakening to a surprisingly dry day in Plymouth. We arose early and headed to the train station to discover that much to my chagrin, everything was electronic. I looked desperately for a kiosk with a person. Nope. All I could find were instructions on how to electronically pay for parking and purchase tickets. It took me a good thirty minutes to figure out the parking situation. In the end, I talked to a person on the phone which was what I had wanted in the first place rather than dealing with technology. Purchasing the tickets was far easier. Taking a deep breath, after winning the battle with my technological nemesis and fully prepared to embark on the day’s adventures, Joaquin and I waited for the train to Boston.     We arrived at South Station in Boston, and upon walking out the ornate front doors, Joaquin and I were confronted with a sleepy metropolis. It was still early; only a random person here and there was...

Nantucket...even the name sounds romantic. Upon Joaquin’s request, he and I had been reading Moby Dick . I had attempted this novel years ago and had quickly realized that I did not want to spend the energy required to read it; however, I was proud of Joaquin’s request and obliged. Melville did not paint a romantic portrait of Nantucket, rather it was Ishmael’s search for  adventure and the idea of seeing new horizons, going out on a vast sea that struck me as romantic. The dingy, dark description of the island with odors of smelling fish and tattooed cannibals called out to me across the American landscape. I was born and grew up in port towns, but Nantucket seemed like a delicacy just out of my grasp, so to Nantucket, we ventured.      To get to Nantucket, one must catch a ferry, so Joaquin and I drove from Plymouth to Hyannis with the heavy summer rain pelting our little rental car. The entire way to Hyannis, I gripped the steering wheel revealing...