We wrote Off the Map while we were living in a flat on the edge of the woods in Prague. The zine was our daily anchor; some days it seemed like we only emerged long enough to walk Ida, the golden retriever with whom we shared the flat, along with Didi, our mystic roommate who forbade us to cook with garlic, decorated the house with pictures of her guru Baba Ram, and suggested that excessive coffee consumption blocked access to the higher chakras. She moved out long before we finished the zine, taking Ida with her and removing our main excuse for leaving the flat.
When we first decided to write a zine about that summer of travel, we wanted to tell the stories that had shaped us so definitively, to give thanks for all the hands that had guided us along the way, to lend a taste of the wings we’d borrowed to anyone who might be waiting on the ground for an extra push. When we finally finished, after almost two months of mining our collective memories and trying to hammer it all into some kind of shape, we were so sick of looking at the thing that actually distributing it seemed anticlimactic. We agreed to circulate twenty-five copies a piece and let the universe have its way with them. And it did.
By the time we got back to the States, CrimethInc. had started distributing Off the Map in blurry, hard-to-read second-generation scammed photocopy form, purely as a labour of love. It worked well enough for a while, especially with all the help we got from strangers with access to copiers; but as free copies have gotten harder and harder to come by, and the demand for the zine hasn’t let up, it was time for a change. After at least ten thousand copies had been copied and sent out for free by CrimethInc. and other delightful people, we decided that if Off the Map was to live on, it would have to be in the form of a book.
For some of us, zines are more accessible, more inviting; they tempt the reader to tell her own stories, to see that the author (or authors) are no heroines, no experts, but just people, just kids telling it like they see it, and live it. At this point, there are enough copies of Off the Map (the zine) circulating in the underground library that we trust they’ll continue to find their way into the right hands. And let’s face it, this book is a lot easier to read than that crappy dog-eared copy of the zine that’s been read fifteen times – and you can finally see what the pictures are.
The urge to edit is almost impossible. We can’t see anymore with the same eyes that took in these stories, or speak with those voices; since these stories took place we’ve lived through exhilarating heartbreaks, devastating transformations, long stretches of brutal confusion and entire seasons of bliss, and it’s tempting to tweak the old versions a little, to trim the bits that now seem excessively simplistic or ridiculously earnest and bring them in line with our more weathered hearts. But we haven’t, because underneath it all, we still trust that vision of hope and possibility that fuelled the writing of the zine.
We still believe in the viability of dreams, in and through the stuff of daily living, and even as the bedrock for our most solid practicalities. Dreaming is a dangerous proposition; it dares us to risk everything, to walk blind into the hills, to do the hardest work in ourselves and in the world – and to reap the richest reward. Sometimes, possibly, our dreams urge us to reveal ourselves intimately to an audience of strangers, and hope they’ll meet us where we most want to be.
Yours in stories,
Lib & Kika
(archivist note: copied by hand from the 2003 edition of Off the Map)