The importance of elsewhere

I've been thinking about doing something elsewhere.  You know the place.  Not here.  Elsewhere.  Not all the time, just some of it.  Not forever, but for a while.  Some people change jobs, some jump ship, some experiment, most procrastinate.  Some travel.  Some stay travelling.  This came home to me profoundly when a very good friend and colleague recently announced that she was to go travelling for 10 months.  It never occurred to me you could, you know, just keep going.  I travel a lot with work.  I do day trips to here and there and fly overnight long-haul, failing miserably to sleep while the plane bumps erratically en-route home.  But the destination always has the return home on the bottom of the itinery.  Apparently, travel broadens the mind.  The experience may on they surface be one of long-lines, losing baggage, getting sick and feeling nauseous at 'foreign' toilets.  But the end product is mind-broadening.  A greater understanding of different cultures surely leads to greater tolerance which can be no bad thing.  My travel experiences have been mostly good, some amazing and very few terrible.  But ten months elsewhere?  Not here, but elsewhere.  Maybe elsewhere becomes "home" and home becomes The Beach, without the paranoia, or A Room with a View, but with Helena twenty years ago, not now.  There is probably a good film around the idea of Elsewhere, or just maybe it has already been perfectly written.   I discover, through the wonders of modern technology, that I have neither shared a tweet for many days, or blogged a thought for several months.  I have been mired in the here and now, and too little concerned with the importance of elsewhere.  As for the screenplay project and the novel and the other writing, they are still sat there on a desk in that place called Elsewhere.  Like the kids' bedroom wall in The Time Bandits, maybe if I push hard enough, it will move?  Slowly at first but then with more weight and effort it begins to shift.  It moves further and further, momentum builds so the bedroom is now distant and the wall falls away in to the void.  I follow too.  Spinning downwards, until I land with a thump - elsewhere.  I guess my friend was brave enough to push the wall and keep on pushing.  I wish her good health, safety and many wonders as she travels and hope one day that Elsewhere for her and her beau, may end up being right back here.  In the meantime, Bon voyage.  Au Revoir.