Pax Nortona – A Blog by Joel Sax

Yesterday was as momentous as being wedged against a smooth, unshatterable pane of glass: forever in the sight of the world but engaging with none of it. Went out to find the stars using Google Sky Map. For the second night in a row, however, a crazy, burning thatch-roof of orange-tinted fog prevented me from [...]

The worst diseases are the invisible ones. They are like a drawer that you can’t close and can’t see the reason why it won’t close. You can shove against it with all your might, but the pressure gets you nowhere or makes things worse. The state of my little finger is like this and, when [...]

Tonight, my demons have come to visit. These are the people who saw that I wasn’t as smart as I pretended to be. I lay out service in the chasm that is my mind, invite them to sit down, ask them to tell me why they are here, but they won’t talk to me.

Because I want to counter the persistently unbalanced criticism of Obama’s acts as president, it is easy for me not to speak my true mind.

Are they on the trail or are they just using it as a treadmill?

I’m staying at a tall, glass-tower hotel. Something wicked is happening here. The black glass part of the hotel rests upon a stained, white concrete base that is maybe five stories high. By getting into the wrong elevator, I learn that there are secret doings here. A hotel worker smiles at me as he comes [...]

The excesses of impulse that characterize most manias do not apply to me most of the time I am in episode. Thoughts stream through my head. Incredible schemes surge across the two hemispheres of my brain. I keep these to myself, sure that if others see them they would prevent me from realizing my dreams. [...]

The urge to pick the skin off my fingers overwhelmed me a couple of weeks ago. The two spots I prefer had lost their scars, but these are back now. I had gnawed through the skin to the muscle on the left index finger1 after I had my tooth pulled and renewed the blemish on [...]

Descriptions of mania done by the performance artists we all turn into when the waves of emotion overwhelm us can include hands going to our temples with the cry “It feels like my head is going to explode!” Theatricality reveals truth if we observe what researchers have discovered in the course of revealing

I have just installed mobile-service for this web-site. If you view it with your i phone or your droid, it looks different

After cruising the streets of Salt Lake City, I find myself in a dentist’s chair. The dentist reviews the care I’ve received from six different professionals. He focuses especially on one, whose treatments I found especially palliative. A graphic illustrates what I think was done to my mouth — the good spread clear across the [...]