here and not here

here and not here abstract:
This creative text is adapted from the narration in my film here and not here (2025)—a diary, dispatches from a place that does / not exist—a site of pressured being, a state in waiting, a geography beyond, but permanently besieged by conflict—and also the willed, resistant space of dream, desire, and imagination. Made in the Occupied West Bank and Golan Heights during the A. M. Qattan Foundation’s “Ways of Traveling” Residency, 2020–23, here and not here reflects multiple creative collaborations and conversations.

ROOM:A Sketchbook for Analytic Action|10.25

Overwhelm

ROOM is a sketchbook for analytic action, and toward this end, my editorials have paralleled the action of psychoanalytic interpretation by recognizing common threads and highlighting the underlying themes that connect different voices from all over the world. In this way, the significance of each issue is brought to the surface and marks another discrete moment in ROOM’s living analytic archive.

The essays in ROOM 10.25 are as raw and urgent as any we have received. Their authors hail from Sudan, Palestine, Israel, Croatia, and the US. They write about what it feels like to be living a split screen. They write about how we split words from context. They write from inside a refugee camp in Gaza and from inside the federal building in New York. They write about children—their own and ours. There is no single thread to hang on to. There is no center that holds.

Finding strength to bear witness and to bear our broken hearts is also analytic action.

ESSAYS
Celeste Kelly | Splitting Genocide
Sonni Mun | My Home: Kidnappings in New York
Eiman Hussein | The Unseen Scars Navigating the Psychological Landscape of Sudan’s War
Oleksandra Kurbala | Dreaming of Crimea
Karim G. Dajani | Why Him and Not Me? Speaking of Home, An Update
Dr. Mohamed Omran Abu Shawish | When Trauma No Longer Resembles What We Read in Books
JT Mikulka | Demands for Recognition
Dana Amir and Azz a-Din | Looking into the Face of the Gorgon
Jyoti M. Rao | Our Children: Discarded, Disdained, and Destroyed
Irwin Kula | Why We Can’t Stop Our Children from Dying of Gun Violence
Caleb Cobra Cornell | When Kids Kill Other Kids: A Sixteen-Year-Old Writes After Columbine
Patrick Cole | We’ve Had a Problem: We Don’t Understand Our Touchstone Quotes
Andrea Luka Zimmerman | here and not here

CORRESPONDENCE
Helena Vissing and Heba Al-Turk | Mothering Through Genocide

POETRY
Nan Cohen | Late Grief
Natasha Kinsella | Inheritance

ART
Joyce Pommer
Cynthia Sparrenberger

WE ARE THE LIGHT
Number 3

COMMUNITY PROJECTS
Susan Cortilet Jones | Mental Fitness Matters: A Community Supporting Activism and Personal Resilience
Dana Amir and Mira Erlich-Ginor | Psychoanalysis in Action: A Collective Response to Political Crisis
Update: From Sanctuary to Scary Place for Latinx Migrants and Their Children: Can Access to Education Still Be a Motor for Change in New York City?
Update: Speaking with White Catholics and Evangelicals: An Interview with Doug Pagitt of Vote Common Good

READER RESPONSE
Michael Ferrara

• https://www.flipsnack.com/analyticroom/r...