The last place on earth is not necessarily a bad place to be. The last place on earth is perhaps the best place to be. Sometimes between the beginning and the end there is a lot of movement, uncertainty, doubt, and sorrow, so the only place you really want to be is at the end.

I decided to leave the vagabond life behind because searching had brought no solace anyway, and what I loved the most was what I had left behind – the trees, the land, the little girl, the home. Nothing to some people, but everything to me. Nothing and everything are just a matter of perspective. For me, at home with loved ones is always the best place to be, and though I felt homeless and sometimes hopeless, I had known all along what I really wanted. It was just hard to dream about, frightening to hope. I didn’t want to lose it again – when everything became nothing and nothing was filled with a whole lot of empty.

So when I saw my heart’s most fervent desire reflected in the bayou, I was not surprised, yet surprised all the same, and filled with glee and peace. I want to exist in that wooded place where a little girl will always be near me. The beginning of the earth or even the middle holds only my past. I want now. Though the past is only a backward extension of my present experience, and the future exists only in the imagination, all of everything that was or will be is connected to my present experience by time–the everything of now is connected by the loss of the past and the not-yet-real and uncertain future. One is past and the other never comes to pass.

Why not just accept the ridiculous reality that all I have is now? That is not such a bad thing, is it – to have only now? Because at this precise moment I see a bird–an egret, to be exact. And he is wading in the bayou just for me, right now. If now is all I have, I’ll take it. I don’t need to revolt against the nothingness of the past and the future. I can just accept this moment for all time. I can use reason to acknowledge all of this. Reason doesn’t eradicate, contradict, or attempt to explain the absurd. It validates it.

I want to live in the last place on earth. Now. Because the last place on earth is my home. And when you come right down to it, home is everything.