Uncharted Territories

"A sort of phantom limb sensation motivates me to draw closer to the (        ) which interests me most. We think we feel ourselves where we can't possibly be, an extension of our body. We go to examine the sensation, and discover the absence of ourselves. But there is something there. There is still a tingling. We know it is a lie, but we want to believe it is an extension of us. When and where did we lose this limb, that we feel a hankering after it? What battle occurred in time immemorial or before our conscious existence?" —William Keckler

Here's a contentless book scanned by Google and spotted by TheArtOfGoogleBooks.  It's technically Essays by Oliver Goldsmith (1756).

"Towards the Unknown": a illustration from Great Explorers of Africa (1894).

"Benighted": an illustration from The Portsmouth Road and its Tributaries by Charles George Harper (1895).

We're delighted to see our atlas of blank maps profiled at the Bibliotheca Invisibilis, which collects all sorts of conceptualizations of the invisible.

"Nothing tells us where we are and each moment is a place we have ever been." —Enrique Vila-Matas, Dublinesque

A blank(ed) map from a 1901 issue of Scribner's magazine.  The caption reads, "He had seen an empire ... wiped off the map in twenty minutes."

"Before making judgments which will affect the environment and other people, it is vital to reconstruct a map's 'missing essence.'  The best way to do so is through imaginative map use."
—Phillip Muehrcke & Juliana O. Muehrcke, Map Use (1998)

Pictured is a "map's essence," photographed by Dorian Cavé.  See full image here.

"Only two novels in the past 67 years have not been described somewhere on their dust jackets as 'compassionate,' and both of them were atlases." —M.J. Arlen, "How to Tell a Novel by Its Cover," LIFE (Aug. 21, 1964)

"On the map missing data stare out as a blank, often risking giving a misleading impression."
—John Langton & Robert John Morris, Atlas of industrializing Britain 1780-1914

"Why didn't you tell me in the map room there was a map missing?"
—Gwyn Cready, Aching for Always (2010)

The first page of the maps section in Polybius' Histories was intentionally left blank. (We approve!)

"To penetrate as far as possible into the great white area on Dawson's map, south of the Kananaskis Lakes, marked with the magic word 'Unexplored,' that most fascinating and suggestive of all names to any lover of the wilderness."
—Canadian Alpine Journal

A blank map from James Whale's classic film The Old Dark House:

Here's a poem addressed to our interactive "Follow Your Bliss Compass," by a nifty guy who goes by the name "700 miles to infinity."

Thanks to the Wacky Web Sites blog, who covered our atlas of blank maps: