I’m still seeing friends and going to museums, but I took time out for an important appointment. Since this is my second year in Pittsburgh I decided I ought to have all of my health needs met in Pittsburgh. Giving up most of my New Jersey doctors was easy; I’d been doing that every other year, anyway. But my eyes were another matter, since they are the most important part of my body and the most problematic.

My New York eye doctor gave me a good recommendation in Pittsburgh; I’m very satisfied. The only person I hadn’t transitioned (love that word) was my contact lens practitioner. I love the doctor I’ve been seeing here in New York. She has spent many hours getting the lenses just right. But, I decided I ought to have someone in Pittsburgh, so I got a recommendation, went to the appointment and left with my gut feeling  that I should go back to New York. This all occurred in May; I made the New York appointment almost immediately after, and this was the day. I’m still happy with her and it’s a wonderful excuse to get back to New York at least once a year.

I met Laura for lunch after the appointment. We followed our long lunch with a visit to the natural history museum to see an exhibit about mythical animals. It was a great exhibit with a lot of interesting art, particularly from China and Japan. Although they gave wonderful explanations for how some of these creatures came to inhabit our imaginations, I sometimes wonder if, at least some of them might have really existed, and we just haven’t yet found any trace of them.

My Asian art class looked at a picture of a unicorn  created around 5000 years ago. Although very tiny, it was wonderfully detailed and comparable to an equally detailed picture of a rhinoceros. Why do we presume one is real and the other mythical?

I feel that way about dragons, also. They are so pervasive in Asian culture; why couldn’t they have been real at one time. Shirley Sun said the dragon was a creature of the mind. Unlike some of the discussions we have, there was nothing ambiguous about her statement. Too bad!