Where Was I Again
(Essay Press)
Split in two sections, Where Was I Again is a series of refrains on loss, gendered disability, community, alienation, productivity, value, and performativity. Written at the end of the author’s months-long period of being bedridden, Where Was I Again replicates her neurodivergence at the sentence-level, operating primarily through fragments and association rather than linear thought. Fundamentally playful, it layers and flattens experiences, calling out to an ever-shifting and multiple you.
“In the drugscope of Muenz’s vision we are alone in the language of debased potential, trying to tell apart the twins: one a shimmering self, the other a spectral negative of self, dissociated, damagingly present.”
“[Muenz] rejects the conventions of disability and confessional writing: there are no moments of diagnostic exposition here, no pleas for empathy. Instead, Muenz writes with casual, elliptical confidence, casting the speaker’s experiences as universally relatable.”
“Muenz captures the truth of processing life as small moments that continue to live with us…[and] expertly shows the ability of language to articulate the difficulties of reconciling body and mind”
“[Where Was I Again] shows the importance of how we deliver our words and thoughts, and how even a single period can change how we respond to one another.”