Elsewhere

A diagnosis of a single, pervasive condition — being elsewhere — from the Ibis Horizons participatory-perception framework (part of a five-piece series, 2026). To be elsewhere is to have one's attention and participation drawn out of the present and the actual: into rehearsed futures, remembered pasts, abstractions, and representations, at the cost of contact with what is here. The piece argues that much of what we experience as fragmentation, depletion, or unreality is this displacement, and it maps how elsewhere shows up across domains of life — inner experience, relationships, work and institutions, culture, and the spiritual — naming, for each, what it costs, its here-counterpart, and a first move once it is seen. The aim is recognition: once named, the pattern becomes difficult to unsee, and coming back becomes possible.