TheBanyanTree: bouyancy

[Teague, Julie Anna]

Archimedes supposedly yelled, "Eureka!" while lying in a tub of water 
and happening upon the principle of buoyancy.  Eureka!  Just like that, 
he nderstood why things float.  Even things that seem solid and 
grounded are often unobserved to the naked eye) floating.  The earth's 
crust.  Icebergs.  Happy Women. Yes, sometimes I am floating, even when 
no one is aware. The ten percent of me you see is the tip of the 
iceberg deceptively looking like the whole kit-n-caboodle, while the 
other ninety percent of me is below the surface.  Happiness is bubbling 
up from deep inside me, detectable only, maybe, in the curl of my lips. 
I sometimes find myself bobbing in a whole wide warm ocean of happiness 
and in danger of floating completely away.

Like Archimedes, I have hit upon the laws that govern my personal 
buoyancy: when I can forget myself, or what I think of as "self"--a 
body and a brain, the tip of the iceberg.  When I can let go of the 
demands of my physical body and stem the constant chatter of my brain 
which insists on looking in at me from the outside and judging, 
worrying, planning.  When I am completely and utterly in the present, 
only in *this* excrutiatingly perfect moment.  As cliche as that 
sounds, as many times as I have read it and thought about it, it is 
only when I experience it that I grasp the concept of "be here now."  I 
can intellectualize it, but I can only fully understand it when my head 
shuts down and my heart takes over.  At the time, I'm not Ego, that 
monkey on my back, outside myself observing that, whoa, I'm completely 
absorbed in this moment.  I am not thinking.  I am not Julie.  I am not 
a mother, lover, programmer, runner.  My thighs are not fat, my wallet 
is not thin, I am not too much or too little of anything.  I am just 
joy.  I am an experience.  And it is only afterwards, when I am 
reflecting on why I felt so content, floating, peaceful, buoyant, that 
I get it.  I understand what was going on.  Eureka!