I Am Dressing As The Page of Cups For Halloween This Year
For the last three years, I have known what I was going to be for Halloween sometime around March.
2023 was the year of the Lo-Fi Beats to Study To Girl. 2024 was THE UNKNOWN (the singular good thing to ever come from generative AI, and largely because of how hard humans committed to a truly unhinged concept and inadvertently terrifying small children). And this year, 2025, was the Page of Cups.
At the beginning of the year, I kept drawing this particular card, upright and reversed. Either way though, the card was a frequent visitor of my tabletop and it got to the point where every time I stared at the card, I went “I could probably rock this outfit.” And then one day, I decided “I will rock this outfit.”
I started this year trying to be mindful of the fact that I had lsot weight due to the compounded changes of my diet because of my diabetes diagnosis. And because I wanted to dress better. Partly to feel better. Partly to eventually attract positive attention from literally anyone. Probably more of the former than latter. I may or may not be lying to you, or myself, while writing this paragraph. Not the point.
But I had just enough fashion sense to look at the individual components and figured I could thrift them, use them for a cohesive Halloween costume and then reuse the individual piees.
Pink baret and blue scarf? Perennial.
Red & white vertical sleeveless shirt? Eternal.
Dotted jeans. I mean, it’s a pair of jeans. That’s always somewhat useful.
But if you’re gonna cosplay a card, you gotta incorporate a card, so I took a spare piece of cardboard, applied ample spray paint, and cut to size…
But the Page of Cups was not simply selected because it was easy to cosplay. It was selected because (like more tarot I would argue), it was/is a pertinent reflection of who I was/am.
During a year where GenAI continues to make a mockery of my work, during a year where I continue to strive to make art, during a year where I am writing even more, during a year where I am being honest with myself and others, during a year where I am **trying** perhaps more earnestly than I ever have before, how can I not resonate with the card of curiosity and possibility?
This year, I have lost/shedded both anchors and lighthouses. I, a greedy cup of a writer, am trying to fill spaces/voids. I, a vessel malcontent to be empty, am trying to hold onto intangible things.
Lightning in a bottle (inspiration).
Jars of light (energy).
Deep wells of ink (creativity).
This has been a long fucking year.
One where I have been pushed to limits I did not know I had. Onoe where i have willingly emptied what I had held within me in favor of finding something new.
It’s an apt that after a whole year and change of writing more, I have ended up writing about the same things again and again. The repetition is a key indicator that I already know means I am not done with them.
But in any case, I am going as the Page of Cups for Halloween this year. I am trying to embody the things the universe (and my internal subconscious) seems intent on telling me to embody.
And I can’t quite say that this is a noble endeavor, but it is an endeavor.