As my friend Eric puts the final touches on an electric fence for his six lambs, a ratty old blue Honda bumbles down the dirt road. It’s Eric’s neighbor, the woman he calls “crazy Jane.” We’re in Barnet, Vermont. She’s a New Yorker who moved here two decades ago. She’s approaching 70 years old. She has shaggy gray hair. She’s a writer. She’s a Buddhist. She is eyeing me, surely thinking, Who is this new person visiting our tiny community? What’s her deal? I tell her where I’m going, what I’m up to.
“Are you going to make violins?”
“What?”
“There’s a violin making school in Montana.”
She quickly loops into a long lament about an ongoing feud she has with another neighbor.
“She’s a displaced person,” she explains, “I’m sure you know many of those.”
“Hmm,” I reply, not really eager to launch into a long conversation. It’s starting to rain. The fence isn’t done. I can sense Eric’s need to finish this job so the sheep can munch on grass. They are starving.
“What a strange thing it is to be human,” she replies, winks and waves goodbye, skidding out to meet a flock of young 24 year old women who have apparently dropped from heaven they are so smart.
A displaced person? She didn’t mean geographically. She meant mentally. She meant scattered in some way. I found this curious and wondered if I was displaced, if any of my friends were and what exactly that means.