I am alive... I am beautiful... what else is there?

I've been reading (slowly) the journals of Susan Sontag. Came upon this passage just now and felt that I needed to repeat it; partially so that it's here where I can find it quick-reference like, partially because I want to type it to get it into my head and other-partially because it really fits the theme of my little blog (see tag line above):

(She wrote this after her first sexual experience with a woman. Immediately preceding this she'd been talking of caring only about knowledge and the body/physical being meaningless. And that being alive/dying didn't really matter because of the above).

I knew everything then, nor have I forgotten it now...

...And what am I now, as I write this? Nothing less than an entirely different person... The experience of this weekend could not have been more perfectly timed--And I was so close to completely negating myself or surrendering altogether. My conept of sexuality is so altered--Thank god!--bisexuality as the expression of fullness of an individiaul--and an honest rejection of the--yes--perversion which limits sexual experience, attempts to de-physicalize it, in such conepts as the idealization of chastity until the "right person" comes along--the whole ban on pure physical sensation without love, on promiscuity...

I know now a little of my capacity... I know what I want to do with my life, all of this being so simple, but so difficult for me in the past to know. I want to sleep with many peole--I want to live and hate to die--I will NOT teach, or get a master's after I get my B.A... I don't intend to let my intellect dominate me, and the last thing I want to do is worship knowledge or people who have knowledge! I don't give a damn for anyone's aggregation of facts, except in that it be a reflection [of] basic sensititivy which I do demand... I intend to do everything... to have one way of evaluating experience--does it cause me pleasure or pain, and I shall be very cautious about rejecting the painful--I shall anticipate pleasure everywhere and find it, to, for it is everwhere! I shall involve myself wholly... EVERYTHING MATTERS! The only thing I resign is the power to resign, to retreat: the acceptance of sameness and the intellect. I am alive... I am beautiful.. what else is there?

 

And also just because it's wonderful.

(From Susan Sontag, Reborn. Journals and Notebooks 1947-1963)