As I’ve been going through my old journals and digitizing the entries—a tedious and time-consuming process that will eventually yield a much more accessible and searchable archive—it’s been fun and enlightening to rediscover things I was thinking about at any given time.

Like this entry from March 10, 2020:

A few pop culture references have come to mind as the coronavirus COVID-19 marches on:

• the general escalation of uncanny surreality in Signs, as things progress and get ever close to home
• Arrival and its shaky coalition of countries trying to understand an opaque, unsettling presence
• Station Eleven [the book] and the global pandemic flu that paralyzes the world and makes humanity wonder what it is
• Idiocracy with its president so not equipped for the moment

I hadn’t seen Contagion at that point, otherwise that would’ve been there too.

I love how I wrote “the coronavirus COVID-19” as if I’d possibly get it confused with another global contagion sometime in the future. But hey, I’m all about clarity.