I'm going to take this last page of this essay​, the last essay I will ever write as Dann O'Keefe, to describe how miraculous I feel all of this is and how grateful I feel that you are in a position to read these words. Fifty years ago, this could not have happened. The technology was not there. Eighty years ago, and I would have been thrown in jail for publishing something as vulgar as Adam Forwarder. I'll tell you where the gratitude really kicks in: For my entire life, I never had to compromise for any sort of "market" or "editor" or anything like that. Hate it or love it, Adam Forwarder is pure Dann O'Keefe, as good and as strong as I can make it. In the past, you could write whatever you wanted, sure, but it was with the understanding that you would never get it published and no one would ever see your work. The fact that you are reading these words right now proves that is no longer true. In my opinion, that is the future of All Art in the Age of the Amateur. No one's going to get paid, but everyone will have complete creative freedom. 

​     I'll leave you with these final blessings, my loyal and so very appreciated reader. I wish for you never to go hungry. I wish you warmth and comfort. I wish for you someone to love and for someone to love you for who you are. My departing advice: Seek out moments of joy and peace, and once you find them, recognize and respect them for how rare and precious they are.

    As for me? I'm living the life I've wanted to for all my 70+ years. All this year, certainly since I began this essay seven months ago, I've had to keep telling myself to just accept it, Accept Paradise, and I do, I do, but I also try to savor every second because I know it cannot last. If you think of me at all, see me as the person I see myself as and have all my life, as the man with the pencil scribbling away in his notebooks with a deep and lifelong love and fascination for life. We have a connection, you and I, a connection that, I believe, enhances both our lives, and it is a connection that I, at least, intend to keep. It goes like this: I write. You read.

     Look for me. I don't think I'll be hard to find. Until then...

     I love you.

     This is Dann O'Keefe, signing off.

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