Scrapbook MOCA

It’s been a special journey for me as I’ve participated in this project. I started shortly after returning from my first extended stay in Asia as an adult, and I returned to the United States with fresh eyes and a searching mind. These photos, in little ways here and there, have reflected that.

The more fellow travelers I meet, the more I realize that our journey is at once geographical as it is psychological. The wanderers I meet are searching for something. They pick up tiny somethings with each stop, and those somethings accumulate and gather with drops of meaning.  Maybe, if they’re lucky, they learn to stay still. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, they never stop searching.

I am a traveler, at least for now. As I get ready for my first extended stay in Africa, I remember that my earliest memory is on an airplane, somewhere above the Pacific Ocean. I am happiest in motion, whether the roads are paved or dirt, waterways or jet streams. I want to see new lands, breathe new air, meet new people.

My posts with the Museum of Chinese in America end here. (That sounds like the end of a Choose Your Own Adventure book, and I guess that’s fitting.) After snapping photos for this project, I still don’t know how to define the lens through which I see the world. But I know it’s my lens, and I’ll continue to take photos for as long as I have access to a camera.

Thanks for joining me these past few months.   As exhilarating as it is, travel is lonely at times, and it’s nice to bring friends with me on my journeys.  I hope we cross paths again soon.

An Xiao Mina
September 2011