Arriving Late to Parties

and other thoughts about joining substack in 2024, being bad at naming things, Page energy, and goth ducks that walk upright.

Hello friends, and welcome to my substack.

I feel like one of those people who arrives extremely late to a party after sending at least twelve texts that they’re on their way. They brought something that would have been useful at the beginning of the night, like chips, or ice, or flavored seltzer water. But now everyone responsible has gone home, and the people still around either live here or didn’t secure a ride anywhere else, and everyone’s got this weary look like—you’re excited now, sure, but wait until you see the mess in the backyard.

In case you can’t tell, I have been this late to many parties in my life. I’m a Gemini, after all. So I know for a fact that there’s a particular feeling you get when you walk in. Like either all the good stuff has already happened, or like you got here just in time for the actual good stuff.

For my sake, and yours, I’m hoping it’s the latter. But I guess we’ll find out together.

I’ll tell you a personal failing of mine—just to make sure we start off on the right foot. I’ve been a professional author (meaning sometimes people pay me for my books) for going-on eleven novels now, and was an amateur one (meaning I had a lot more fun writing) for a long time before that, and even with all that experience…I am truly awful at naming things.

Almost every single book title I’ve ever come up with has been gently reworded or all out scrapped and replaced by the powers that be. My best friend (who is a naming genius as well as the regular kind of genius) often “helps” me name my characters, which means she comes up with a list of a few reasonable ones for me to choose from so there are no bad outcomes, like a benevolent adult offering a toddler a choice between ice cream flavors so they can feel grown up.

For all the aforementioned reasons, I went on a band name generator to come up with a name for this newsletter. Don’t judge me, okay, it asked me a bunch of Mad-Lib (did I just date myself? Do Mad-Libs still exist?) style questions where I provided various descriptive words and at the end it spat out a list. So I was involved, I just wasn’t in charge. Which these days is kind of how I like it. Or how I’m trying to learn to like it.

Anyway, I went with “My Heart, Your Teeth” because it gave me goosebumps. And because it feels exactly right for what I hope this project will be. I’ll give you a hunk of my messy, bloody, life-giving viscera and you decide whether to shred it for sport or consume it for sustenance. Everyone cries at some point. The dream, realized.

And now, allow me to share a few misses from the auto-generated title list with you for giggles, because I hope it won’t be all blood and viscera here:

My Community Romance (this was a very close second)
Taking Back Sunday (I can’t be positive but I think that one’s already been claimed)
Nine Meandering Ice Lovers (what)
Tehlor Eats the Moss (sorry, I need this one for something else)
and finally: Super Ethereal Wolves, which I may have to start an actual band just to make use of.

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I drew a tarot card to get an idea of what to expect from starting this project. I’ve been reading tarot since I was about sixteen so this is a pretty common practice for me when embarking on anything new. The card I got was the Page of Swords, which actually feels pretty perfect all things considered.

According to Charlie Claire Burgess—one of my favorite tarot readers, writers and artists who has an incredible substack of their own here—the pages are the archetype of the student. The apprentice. Full of enthusiasm and vigor, setting off on a new journey of information gathering and synthesizing but also, and perhaps more importantly, experimenting, according to Charlie’s book The Radical Tarot. The Page of Swords might just be the pageiest page, because the swords are connected to the element of air, and to the mind. The intellect. Language and communication.

(Page of Swords from Charlie Claire Burgess’s The Gay Marseille)

I’ve been thinking a lot about students lately, as across the country college students resist attempts by their administrations, the police, and the federal government to dismantle the encampments they created in order to protest institutional investment in the violent colonial entity of so-called “israel”. I admire these students for showing up when so many people who are allegedly older and wiser remain silent and inactive in the face of the undeniable and catastrophic ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.

These encampments are protest sites first and foremost, and we should keep the Gazan people front of mind when discussing any aspect of these actions. (Donate to Project Olive Branch here to help families fleeing the genocide). But something that unexpectedly moved me about these encampments beyond their intended purpose is the atmosphere of creative exploration happening within their boundaries.

The Page doesn’t always have the time or know-how to build something that endures—at least not in its original form. It’s the card of the first draft. Of inexpert but passionate energy being applied without pretense at mastery. What better metaphor is there for tent villages born of the passion of thousands of students?

And the encampments are even more Page-coded when you consider that in many cases they have become intentional communities. Places where folks work together to meet each other’s needs, where skills are shared and excess resources are distributed equitably. Where community agreements set the framework for engagement with each other, with the outside world, with the press and the administrators and the police. Within these temporary structures, students are exploring what it takes to build a different kind of world. The communities themselves may not be intended to last forever in this form, but the lessons learned from this exploration will endure, and carry their brave explorers into whatever iteration comes next.

This, to me, is the gift of the Page archetype. The idea that the lessons we learn are more important than the perfection of our final product. Exploration and mistake-making and the messy business of becoming. I also think Pages are a card of faith, because what requires more faith than to begin without a guarantee of success? To begin not because you know exactly what to do, but simply because you can’t stay stagnant any longer?

So that’s the energy I’m taking my inspiration from as I launch this project. I don’t know exactly what it’s going to be. I know I’m tired of bite size, nuanceless takes, and I’m tired of having my engagement limited to one percent or less of my followers by the meta overlords. Also, to be totally transparent, my books don’t sell as quickly or for as much now that I’m out as trans and vocally opposing genocide, so subscriptions will be helpful for that (huge gratitude for everyone who has subscribed already). I have ten animals (three dogs, six black ducks that walk upright like little goth butlers, and an intermittent truce with the cat who lives in my partner’s office). They all need to eat.

My shoddy structure (which might be more accurately described as a hope) is for this to be a place I can share my experiences with divesting from the machine, and building community, and mutual aid—basically all the things that probably brought you here from my Instagram, but with more room for tarot and myth and folklore and metaphor. The things I study with a Page’s passion. If that sounds like your jam, I hope you’ll stay. And if you can think of anyone else who’s jam it sounds like, I hope you’ll invite them to join us, too. The ducks will thank you (or eat you, it’s hard to say which, so that’s a chance you’ll have to take).

Yours truly,
Tehlor Eats the Moss