The Misprint

All I could see through the window was the erroneous result printed by a giant printer. Had it really been malfunctioning for a while? As for our car, it was no longer just a car—it had turned into a suitcase on wheels. Or maybe that’s what all cars really are. But my face reflected on the car window against a green-brown background looked disappointed yet full of hope.

As I look out the window, I see everything moving, and I, too, am in motion, like a snail carrying its house on its back, minus the speed. But not because I was in a car that was already moving. It was the movement within me. The trees looked like watercolor streaks or, rather, like distorted lines in a misprinted image. Many suitcases plus speed—one might say this was the cause of the error. It seemed that the heavier the luggage, the faster the speed needed to be, just so you knew you’d gotten home quickly, unloaded everything, and forgotten the whole ordeal. Still, that blurred image of trees and houses was telling me something more—something I wasn’t yet able to articulate.

I kept thinking about my luggage and whether I had really needed everything I packed. Most likely not, but there are things that are absolutely useful and things with sentimental value. I tried to strike a balance. But it seems that stuff has its own energy and brings back memories… But wasn’t this just a dissimulation of the inability to remember important things? Of course, we need stuff, but do we really need it as a pretext, context, content substitute, or a helper? Why do we truly need it? Doesn’t it, in fact, shape our relationship with freedom?

I wished I could let go of most of it and just buy exactly what I needed, when I needed it, and sell whatever could no longer be used a second time. This applied to all the objects I had ever owned, except for a few clothes and small electronics. And their accessories.

However, what I wanted was not to make an apology for decluttering so that future trips would be easier for me, allowing me to fit everything into a tiny backpack and nothing more. What I wanted was to understand why this was a need beyond its pragmatic impulse to simplify my life.

We made a stop halfway to take a break. My father, a rather restless and hurried driver, surprisingly wanted this time to stay and admire the mountainous landscape from a high plateau—the valleys and peaks from above. Since it was an exception, I told myself I should enjoy it, and we stood there for ten minutes, gazing into the distance. He said nothing, but something was simmering inside him. And within me, the stillness of that image was boiling—I almost wanted to stay in place for a while, to not know that I had to move from point A to point B. And that between them stood a great piece of luggage...

I wondered if my father felt like that luggage, dragged from place to place, not understanding much, but having to do it for me nonetheless. He was a piece of luggage carrying another large one on his back.

I asked him if he had felt obligated to bring me—if he had done it reluctantly, like a duty rather than a choice. He said that at first, it had seemed that way, that he hadn’t been in the mood, but now, on the road, he had relaxed and preferred to take things as they were and enjoy the moment. I told him that was the healthiest attitude one could have. Yet, I couldn’t focus on anything but that finally well-printed image, without errors.

All the fir trees stood beautifully upright, without anything hanging from them, without them clinging to anything. Even in the misprinted image, all these elongated trees, like thin streaks of printer ink, had something so simple about them.

If I had been five years old, I probably would have wondered why trees don’t have to carry luggage with them. More than that—why don’t they have to travel? Why do we have to move from place to place, hoping for something better? A child doesn’t ask such questions to be answered with, "That’s because we’re not trees." They ask because they don’t understand why a goal can’t be reached in a familiar place, and why, if you leave, you need to take everything with you—things that have nothing to do with the new place.

A printer’s first attempt at an image often smudges, stretching the ink across the page before it finds clarity. A sort of diluted and prolonged beginning. Whether printed or not, the tree seems to remain in that beginning, rooted and unchanged. But we, humans, do not. We never get to be a single, unblurred version of ourselves. We seem more interesting. Or so we like to believe. We want to feel the weight and the romanticism of endings so that we can experience even greater thrills at new beginnings. Maybe it's our short life-span’s fault.

Or, as some say, no matter how many times we move, we carry the same luggage. So, in a way, we remain in the same stage.

But I didn’t feel that way. I felt that my luggage was like my identity—something that served past purposes but could no longer serve me from now on. Why would I still need them now? Wasn’t I leaving to become someone else? A completely different person? The luggage wasn’t just my past—it was me.

I needed another me. With completely different needs, someone else entirely.

Yet, what I needed was not to settle down and let my identity build itself based on that point B. And to carry the same old luggage from B to C, then from C to D, and so on. Maybe what I needed was to be, directly and solely, the identity that was not tied to any point—only to myself. Otherwise, I would always see myself through the car window, in an endlessly blurred, poorly printed image. Always in motion. But on that printed page, I would have preferred to be at least that beginning—of a tree.

But maybe, just maybe, I could be like a tree: still enough to know who I am, yet strong enough to withstand the speed that turned everything on my father’s car window into misprinted images.