Pocket-sized displays of affection

My cell squawks in the garbled semi-musical tone that indicates a message has arrived. 

Is someone sending me love, in the generic sense of the term? Just like most people, unexpected attention and kind words never fail to make me smile.

Because being thought of, enquired about and communicated with is always nice. 

This time, the message was indeed love, of sorts. Commercial love - a store was advising my pocket of its 20% off campaign during the weekend. 

Between them and the local airline regularly getting in touch via text messages to show me how much they value my existence, I feel some pretty solid bonds developing. 

However, today's message didn't quite top my bank's sudden and unexpected textual outburst of TLC on my birthday last year.

Island life does that to you: mundane trivia becomes terribly exciting, to the point that even robotic communication can brighten up one's day.

Next thing you know, I could soon be sifting through my spam folder with gusto... 

Beam me up, digital reality!

Digital life? It's a snap!

A week ago, when I embarked on the madcap venture of creating a site to meet my future husband, I hadn't quite pondered the ongoing digital v. real life debate that seems to have so many minds in a twist, probably because I have long considered digital life to be an intrinsic part of my (real) life. 

Even before I became Robinson Crusoe on a tiny dot in the middle of the Atlantic, the internet was already part of the furniture. My earliest traceable web presence – but not as Hannah Curious, which is an alias – dates back to 1997. Prior to that, any background brain noise I shared onto bulletin boards during long, rambling conversations that would often last for weeks on end have now been erased. Phew!

Still, according to my calculations, I must have lost my internet virginity aged 18 or 19, which in today's terms would make me a late-bloomer and undoubtedly earn me pitying looks from the all tweeting iSpacebook generation. The digital fossil that I am even recalls the enthusiastic transition from typewriter to computer, the finger frenzy surrounding the @ sign and how I used to marvel at ASCII art.

And if you're 35 like me or older, chances are you remember all this too.

From the onset, I adopted the digital world as an extension of my regular life. Having grown up as a prolific and nomadic letter writer carrying on conversations with penpals from around the world – without even having any remote interest in stamp collecting – I immediately understood the internet's potential for what is now called "social networking".

Besides representing a considerable saving in postage and stationery, the internet was this magic horizon-broadening device that never slept, a communication superhighway and a bottomless well of knowledge. And trivia.

And it still is all these things and more besides, some made of awesome and others truly vile.

I'm one of the awesome bits, looking at the big wide world with my nose pressed against the screen, a multimedia being with people skills that are compatible with different platforms, from face-to-face, to screen via 'phone, page and plate. (Cooking up a storm – and eating – is one of the kindest, loveliest ways of connecting with others, I think.)

In the end, I have come to the conclusion that the so-called gap between digital and real life only applies to those too insecure to be themselves, be it online, or offline. 

Just another stripper in life's peep show

Do you need a sock with that?

Thank you internet! You are constantly turning even the most mundane of pursuits into some voyeur orgy by enticing Citizen Anonymous to validate his or her existence via a whole host of gadgets, platforms and applications.

And I, Hannah, marooned on a minuscule speck of landmass in the middle of the pond, am ridiculously grateful to you for allowing me to shed my natural discretion and become another stripper in life's ongoing peep show.

I know, I know, it's not even a blind date and I'm already putting out...

But you see, I am on a mission here: to prove that a predicament can become a unique selling point, so to speak, providing one has the required, erm, lower body twin appendages (mine being metaphorical, just saying) to flip the whole wreckage on its head and sex it up.

Who said that lucidity, a refusal to conform and satire do not a pleasant threesome make?

Blanks from the past

Transient turns permanent

I sometimes wonder if my head might be full of air bubbles waging a haphazard war on my past, or if it simply expels large chunks of life at random. 

One thing for sure, many episodes of my personal saga have been irretrievably wiped, sometimes leaving me at a loss to connect the dots. And while some parts of my past are a mystery, I am still able to recall whole moments in a vivid multimedia fashion involving all senses. That is as bizarre as it is irritating.

For example, exceedingly tasty blueberry muffins, a striped turquoise blue and black ski hat with earflaps, my first ever pierogis, piercing blue eyes, icicles and a monicker I never forgot is all I can piece together from two trips to Toronto to see my friend some 13 years ago. What disturbs me is that I also know ours was a close friendship, full of correspondence, laughter and conversations and yet I cannot remember any of it, nor why or how we eventually lost touch.

Maybe this semi-amnesia is a direct consequence of having been a nomad for so long and experiencing many different realities in quick succession.

The itchy feet started when I was a little kid and the parental unit – made of two people who had nothing whatsoever in common – blew up. From then on, family – close and extended – became an abstract concept as I never got the opportunity to forge long-lasting relationships with any of the many folks I am related to by blood. To this day, they remain almost complete strangers.

Instead, I built up a small, tight-knit makeshift family of friends, but as the Toronto example above shows, I lost some of them along the way too.

I believe constant itchy feet are why I yet have to meet someone to share my life with. Adaptable and resilient though I may be, I feel I belong everywhere and nowhere in particular at the same time.

And ironically, being stuck on a floating rock in the middle of nowhere is a fitting metaphor for my own personal life: a "life of away" precludes roots.

But I did send a message to my friend whose ubergeek memory is, I suspect, much better at retaining information than mine.

No idea if the contact details I found are still valid, but should a reply arrive, it could go some way towards filling in the blanks.

I think I'd like that.

Damaged goods?

Colleen Moore as "Ella Cinders"

When you are 35 and still on the shelf, the "damaged goods" label almost always attaches itself to you by osmosis – even though one thing may have nothing to do with the other.

Enter stigma, the chewing gum of the relationship world. For a woman, being my age and still single invariably makes me one of several things: ruthless career woman, wacko no one in their right mind will commit to, a dog, i.e. visually offensive, or not into men.

On the career front, not guilty. My profession is a vocation, a calling that will not leave me alone unless I answer it. I tried to ignore it for many years and resistance was pointless so I caved in, gave the power suits to charity, waved goodbye to the comfortable pay cheques and set out to do what I was meant to do all along, struggling every single step of the way. I love what I do, it requires me to constantly stretch my brain cells until they twang and although it all translates into a hand-to-mouth existence, it makes me happy.

And possibly wacko to judgmental eyes, eyes that often belong to those who were too afraid to follow their heart and fight for their passions, settling instead for a cosy life mired in professional frustration. It's a commendable trade-off though, and I admire them for doing so. A lot of the time, it's an altruistic decision on their part, because they wish to provide for their family. But I don't have one of those, so it's a moot point for now.

As for canine comparisons, the only one applicable is the underdog, for several reasons. But this doesn't make me a victim as I have always assumed responsibility for my choices. Have I got a knack for making seemingly impossible choices? Perhaps – I've never taken the easy road, my enquiring mind simply won't let me.

Lastly, I am most definitely into men, no doubts there.

As a result, stigma is something I've learnt to ignore, because I am comfortable being a 35 year old woman, with battle scars and the wisdom they brought me, with a technicolor definition of life, with vast amounts of resilience and, unfathomably, still with the heart of a child.

All things considered, this little shelf of mine somehow turned out to be a privileged vantage point.

But please... don't let me gather too much dust, will you?

Bedpost notches

Monkey on your back?

Fancy a shag, do you? Move along then, there's nothing for you to see here. Seriously Internet, did you misguidedly think I was a nympho in disguise? Or perhaps even a... flesh trader?

I am neither, nor do I need the internet to help me satisfy any casual sexual urges I might have. All I have to do is take a walk outdoors, if I feel so inclined. Only I don't. And walks on an island invariably lead to walking around in circles or falling into the ocean anyway.

For me, intimacy requires a context, a solid affective and emotional bond before getting naked. The glue is the bond, not the bodily fluids. Any other kind of aerobatic nakedness just isn't worth it. I have far too much self-respect for that.

So if the Google machine has dispatched you here by mistake, blame it on your crappy search skills.

But so you know, I really do enjoy long walks and hikes.

Island hoper

Crazy Rabbit, by Peter Even

Yes, hoper as in hopeful, not hopping like a mad Easter bunny on acid or perhaps even bunny boiler. I tend to hope more than I hop, unless a large book has just landed unceremoniously on my metatarsals.

But this island business has foxed a few already. Mind you, I like furrowed brows – they confirm there is life upstairs and curiosity within. The island location is not a gimmick though, it's my geographical reality and it's probably unlike anything you have experienced, unless you happen to be here too.

Here, everyone seems to be everyone else's cousin, everyone knows everyone else's business and being a token foreigner is not that pleasant, despite my ongoing efforts to adapt to local life in a respectful, humble and kind way.

After the social frenzy that surrounded my first year and half on the island, I felt compelled to take a step back. When I finally mastered enough of the lingo to understand what was going on, I discovered that everyone was badmouthing everyone else.

In these parts, criticism is an Olympic-level sport, but praise is an almost completely unknown discipline. This jars painfully with who I am, and has landed me in many situations where I naively squandered the human commodity known as "benefit of the doubt" onto some very undeserving individuals. Professionally, I have been completely eviscerated.

This explains why I won't have much to do with the locals anymore, and certainly not on a personal level.

Also, I never bought into the local circus of appearances, and soon found myself completely incapable of being any less transparent than I have always been. Because being so sensitive and well-meaning has proven a liability, the only way to protect myself is distance.

That is what makes me an "island hoper".

Brave new words

Hug, by Anton Tang

I could have registered with online dating sites and waded through multiple choice questionnaires asking me to pigeonhole my ideal partner while sticking several labels on my own forehead.

Then I could have left my fate up to winks and assorted emoticons, ploughed through template messages with terrible spelling and occasional obscene propositions and hoped that Prince Charming was the other square peg who had misguidedly ended up in the same round hole as me.

Successful though dating sites may be, I was never enough of a linguistic or emotional contortionist to fit into their little boxes. Let's face it, most of us aren't yet we are often willing to make do with boxed approximations of who we are in a bid to connect with others.

I find such an approach stifling, it's like going through an industrial chopper and coming out the other side as a human puzzle with missing pieces.

Besides, in this particular case, the weird geography was always going to involve some technology anyway, hence The Ideal Wife Giveaway.

But do not for a minute think that it is easy for me, that spilling out the contents of my heart onto the internet for all to see is second nature. It is actually a bit daunting, somewhat uncomfortable, very humbling but also oddly exciting. 

The main hiccup is that I loathe showing off, but I am rather fed up with my own company and do not foresee sharing my bed with a stuffed toy moose being a viable lifelong arrangement. Living on an island shouldn't turn me into one, but unless I do something, this is exactly the shape of things to come. 

The absence of a meaningful other is sorely felt. It is this gaping hole in my landscape, this void into which hopes echo and thoughts disappear day after day, dulling life at the edges because somehow, I seem to have neglected that side of things for too long. Now, it's time to sort it out.

And yes, I am hopeful about the outcome of this "personal online marketing initiative", but I also know that I am putting myself through a life-changing experience without any guarantee that anyone might actually want to tag along for the ride, because us humans are a rather unpredictable lot.

However, as fear is about as useful as a rocking chair in terms of getting you where you want to be, here we go... boldly.