In the late afternoons of an Arizona summer, well beyond the city limits, the sun hangs high, casting its heat while the air is still. Birds are singing and crickets chirping. I wander along the desert trails, breaking free from the hours spent glued to screens, immersed in The Sanctuary project. Here, the focused mindset fades away, replaced by the satisfying crunch of gravel beneath my feet, reminding me of the world around me.
My daily walks pull me back to places I’ve left behind. Each step stirs memories of other homes, other lives, chapters closed, yet still alive in my mind. Time trails me, soft but steady, like the voice of someone I used to know.
The world of 2025 moves fast
Lots of screen time, thinking, creating, days blur, but beneath it, there’s a stillness, a faint ache for what’s gone and excitement for what still lies ahead.
The years stack up, taking with them faces we loved, moments we thought would never fade. Some are lost to death; others slip away as life pulls us apart. Each loss leaves a mark, a piece of us carried off.
“Mobile Audiophile” – if you love music everywhere, treat your ears to something special.
Time is like a currency we can’t save up. Every hour we dedicate to what we love, to work that ignites our passion, to peaceful walks that help us unwind, and to moments spent with those who truly matter, is a conscious choice to make our limited time meaningful.
The Sanctuary calls to me, its vision a passion I nurture with care, but so do these trails, this vast sky, and this precious quiet that slips away so quickly.
Below, a passage from Paul Bowles ‘The Sheltering Sky’, its words a mirror to this quiet sorrow. It speaks of life’s illusion of endlessness, how we see time as a deep well, yet its moments are few. A childhood afternoon, a voice that felt like home, how many times will we recall them before they’re gone? We walk on, holding these fragments, knowing they’ll dwindle, yet unable to let them go. This is the ache of our days, a tender longing for what was and what we’ll one day miss.
The Sheltering Sky, 1949
Death is always on the way, but the fact that you don’t know when it will arrive seems to take away from the finiteness of life. It is that terrible precision that we hate so much. But because we don’t know, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.
Paul Bowles, 1910 – † 1999
