The Corona Monologues: 2020 HINDSIGHT

by Nick Lotito

2020 started like most other years. It was an election year, but other than that, it was just another year, albeit with a catchy round number. Then, unexpectedly, perhaps out of the red, we were confronted with an unknown, lethal virus, with no known cure. The world stopped in its tracks, and we found ourselves isolating, a widespread practice we came to call sheltering in place. There was fear, if not loathing, not just in Las Vegas, but everywhere. People were dying, hospitals were filling, and most of us felt helpless.Perhaps in an effort to replace socializing, I began Facebook posts as a means of staying connected. These posts began on March 21st and continued with some regularity through December 30th. Some were laced with goofy puns, some were rants against the then current administration, pejoratively referred to as Hocus POTUS, Error Force 1 and other labels, and some were candid communications reflecting the uncertainty and grief we experienced from the medical news and economic shutdown. Early on, I began to label the posts, The Corona Monologues, a takeoff on The Vagina Monologues I attended years before in Toronto. Friends responded to the posts, encouraging their continuation. At some point, some suggested publishing them.Recently, I printed out all 150 and read them. Perhaps because we are in another election cycle, they have retained their relevance. Because we now know about the events in early 2021, some of the monologues seem like prophecies from Nostradamus. My goal was to stay connected with friends, and these helped. An added benefit was some laugh out loud humor and absurdity from life in the time of covid, to borrow from a Gabriel Garcia Marquez title. So, return with me now to those not so thrilling days of yesteryear where encountering masked men, and women, was not uncommon and experience, or enjoy anew,The Corona Monologues.

264 pages, Paperback

Published December 21, 2023

Reviews

[Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If anyone can find humor in the event that changed the course of all of our lives, the COVID shut-down, this book has done so. Alternating between quite serious and contemplative musings (See CM 29: Sheltering Begets Grieving) and outrageously funny passages replete with puns (CM 23: A Quarantino Movie), a daily corona monologue is a habit worth cultivating. The pandemic has perhaps made all of us more reflective and appreciative of those that we have been able to share time with. I know that it has made me more grateful for things that I have not lost while also more aware that life is filled with change. It is quite refreshing to read the daily musings of one who expresses our universal grief in such a light-hearted amusing way.