Freewrite on the word Displacement by Erika Refsland

Displacement: the amount by which an object is moved from its original position

Source

On my desk there is an orange. It's a bit bulgy, not particularly round, ashamed of its expulsion from spherehood. Despite its misshapen quality, it is bright and smooth and I would really like to eat it, but I am waiting for a friend to pick me up for lunch.

I can smell it, though. Those little pouches of orange juice are calling me, so I pick it up. It's ripe in my hands. I roll it around in my palms, and only start to peel it when I hear the hum-pop of my friend's beat up old Pinto in the driveway.

I set the orange back down on my desk, but not exactly where it was before.

Now displacement cares not for how long I held the orange, nor how hard I contemplated eating it. It's a much more direct concept than that. Displacement only wants to know the distance between where the orange sat while I lusted after it, and where I reluctantly set it when I replaced it to the desk.

Now suppose there is a family. Misshapen, over-ripe, and maybe a bit bitter, it sits. Whether huddled tight or fractured, it is nonetheless a single object, a unit of relational complexity.

It's sitting there, and then a hand comes and grabs it, a hungry hand. The family is inarguably no longer where it once stood. Suppose the hand rolls the family around, tears into its skin. For some time the family is out of control, misused.

Now the hand places it back, this time exactly where it had been sitting before. What is the displacement?