{ meagre + imprints } yogi. photographer. memoir. austin, tx

A text conversation today went like this...

"When I was about 8 I saw a girl walking down the street with a long thick ponytail and it was swinging side to side as she strode.
I remember trying to make my hair swoosh side to side so many times following that scene.
Today I am running and my hair is grazing my shoulders from one to the other in time with my steps."

"From the book?"

"This is just a text message to you."



It's quite fascinating the things that return to me at the most unexpected times. I thought today after this exchange, "I have a lot of memories." Of course I began to analyze this. Do I have so many little captured moments in time because I was very present as a child, perhaps I am just old enough to finally have accumulated many pictures from my past, or am I such an impressionable being that I just recall details that might be forgotten by others. Continuing to document my abstract memories is proving to be a challenge (as there are many) that I adore or feel are significant to who I am.



There were plays on the back porch, cats were my children.
I was a mermaid under the steps in the pool.
I wore pink shells and had long blonde hair.
The pigeons in the barn were terrifying, but nothing compared to the skin of the snake.
Barefoot, tangled hair, tan skin, wild.
Playing house in a horse trailer.
Poohbear, Gray Kitty, Rascal, and Dexter.
Barbies consumed the third story.
Desks like a real school, I could pretend.
Always an outsider, without having read the book or seen the movie.
Skating rink on Mondays, the park on Thursdays.
The days blend, experiences stand out.
Feeling strange and not understanding normal.
My sister's dirty books, party line phone calls, Seventeen Magazine.
French lessons, Tom Petty, sleeping on trampolines.
How many lives have I pressed into these thirty-one years?
I challenged it from the very start.
Out of bed at nap, in the bathroom, pink pills, fear, a hospital room with a mobile.
My first detailed memory.
Why didn't you hold me? Were you as afraid as I was?
Worms from the gutter, he deserved them smashed onto his head.
Punched in the face, I should not have hit her.
I was not soft.
Everything was impulsive, by nature.
Not much has changed.
Soda with a city skyline, He-Man and She-Ra, Sega, Aerosmith.
Easter or Mother's Day, sometime in the Spring.
I craved these times.
Chili and rice, who weighed the most?
Spit down the fireplace, a ladder taken away.
I always had a hug for Paw-Paw.
The pictures don't end.
I remember it all.




Last weekend I was struck by something. I was blessed to have a sleepover with just my Evelyn. She is just like me, impressionable, she's culminating her own memoir. Each moment is an opportunity to offer her what I was given, experiences that shape her. My quirks, opinions, delights, compassion, fears, ect. all come from this wild ride of life (or lives) which I have been fortunate to be a passenger on.