January 8
I had Coco Puffs for breakfast. I was kind of wary of them, since they look like rabbit droppings, but they were chocolatey. They also had too much sugar. Humans really like sugar. Their breakfasts are full of sugar, and their favorite drinks are full of sugar and bubbles. I'm not sure which cereals they have that I can trust.
I got to poetry class early, because I was eager to learn about human poets. When the professor came in, he was all bundled up because of the cold.
It's weird how humans have to wear clothes to adapt to the cold; you'd think that they'd just want to live somewhere warmer where they didn't have to dress up as much. But maybe there are too many of them: we were told that the world has over seven billion humans on it, which is a number so large I can't even imagine it.
When he took his coat and hat and scarf and hand-socks off, he told us that we'd be starting with Walt Whitman, who has a beard like Starswirl.
Our first poem was Leaves of Grass.
(I'm sure that humans can't eat grass. There hasn't been any at the dining hall, and since it's winter, there isn't any fresh grass to be had outside.)
It's a long poem, and I really liked it. It made me long for spring or summer, when the grass is fresh and tasty, and I can roll around in it if I want to.
Professor Hillberry started reading it aloud, and then had all the class read a part of it. Not the whole thing; it was too long for that, and we would have spent all class reading.
Poetry is meant to be read aloud and shared as a community, like a song.
I had trouble with some of the words, because Walt Whitman lived a long time ago, so he said things that I didn't know, but I tried my very best. I wanted to do his words justice, and feel what he felt when he looked at the grass.
There was some snickering at my expense when the poem talked about shod horses walking on granite, but I couldn't be upset.
We didn't make it through the whole poem, because it was too long for one class. Professor Hillberry talked about it after everypersonone had had a turn reading a few lines.
Then he explained some of Walt Whitman's life, and when he had written different poems, and we read part of When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd. It was sad, but I thought it was also a bit hopeful. He was upset that his friend Abraham Lincoln had died, but he took his solace in nature. When sad things happen, it's good to look beyond yourself and out at the whole world.
Earth ponies put their dead in the ground so that new life may spring forth, and unicorns build cairns and monuments, while pegasuses prefer to be set free in the sky. I hadn't really though about it before, but maybe it's because earth ponies like to feel connected to the land, while we'd rather be free of such notions.
On my way home from class, I mailed my letter to Aquamarine. There is a little boxy building which is inside the same building as the dining hall, which is called the Mail Hut. There are boxes that you can get your mail from, and also a little window like at a telegram office where you can give the mail-worker anything that you want to mail. And if he has any big packages that don't fit in your little mailbox, he will give it to you.
Then I went downstairs which is where the student bookstore is. They sold posters for the walls of our dorm rooms, books for classes, pens and pencils and paper, and gifts which have the college seal on them.
The posters were all rolled up, but there was a display like a giant book where you could flip through them. I found one of the Wonderbolts and thought that would look nice on my wall. When I took it up to the counter, the man there said that I could have it for free if I signed one for him 'cause I looked a lot like Misty Fly.
It's odd that he thought that; her coat is a greyish olive, while mine is blue, but I guess if my eyesight wasn't very good, I could confuse the Wonderbolts uniform for her coat color. Our manecolors are kinda similar, and so is our eye color.
Maybe humans don't notice things like coat color.
So I signed a poster for him, and he was really happy, and now I have something that I can put on my wall that will remind me of home.
I didn't feel right not actually buying something, so I asked him what posters were most popular with other students, and he said that the Bob Marley (who is a singer) and the Pink Floyd album covers on girls were the two most popular.
I studied them both, and finally decided that the girls was more interesting, especially since one of them had cows painted on her back and that reminded me of Walt Whitman.
Since I didn't have anything else to do for the afternoon, I hung the posters by my bed, and then read all of Leaves of Grass. I had to look up a bunch of words in my dictionary, and make a few guesses here and there, but I understood most of it.
My favorite part was right at the end:
The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.
I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.
I kept thinking about the poem at dinner—the song of poetry is a window right into the soul. Maybe humans can't fly, but Mister Whitman knew what it was like to fly, and after dinner was over and I was walking back to the dorm with Peggy, I flew up to the roof of our dorm and perched right on the ridge, where I could see the campus spread out below me, and the city below that.
I thought about how Peggy and all the other people I knew so far couldn't really understand the freedom to fly where you want to without having to suffer through a crowded train car with wings, and I thought about how they have to build bridges or take boats or swim whenever they come to water, and it's no obstacle to me.
I thought about sounding a barbaric yawp, staking my territory, but I didn't. It didn't feel right.
Humans are very much like Earth ponies, and they care about what is theirs. We drift around like dandelion fluff, wanting for nothing. We need claim no territory, for the vastness of the sky is our home, and the clouds are our bed.