Who Is That Bubble Girl? I have to live a life immaculately free of chemicals: a bubble life. And by chemicals, I mean, the crap that has infiltrated almost every known product since WWII: the fragrance in other people's shampoo, the Tide and Bounce embedded in clothes, the formaldehyde in cabinet wood, the adhesive holding the imaginary world in place. I'm talking about modernity, and post-modernity, and air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors; cigarette smoke and wood smoke. In the Tarot deck of access, I'm talking about: The World. That's why I live a life of virtual exile, down a dirt road far, far away. After contracting chronic fatigue immune dysfunction syndrome/myalgic encephalopathy (CFIDS/ME) at age 23 – a gripping, crushing, suffocating illness that seized me by the ankles and dragged me under – I thought it could not get any worse. In the year before, I had been riding my bike between cornfields in Ohio, miles uncoiling behind me. I had prodrome symp...