You ask what I've been up to. No answer satisfies. I can only go to LA and see Beyoncé in concert once every few years. I could tell you I had a dream where I went out on my porch to take a picture of a badger sitting on a motorcycle. I could tell you all was going well until a possum leapt from the shadows and bit my hand so hard it left behind five needlelike teeth. I've never seen a possum leap in real life. Just like I'd never seen a spider drag a possum along the floor of a rainforest until last week when that video went around online. That's what I've been up to, if anything—seeing things I've never seen before.
Of course, I've also been drawing. Every few months, the two hands shake, buyer and seller. I started a new series of voyeuristic ghosts in December (caseyhannan.bigcartel.com). People liked them and bought them, some the same day I drew them. You know all this, though. It's hard to tell you something you don't know. Maybe you don't know I'm the man in all my drawings, and you're the ghosts.
Something else you already know, because you're the ghosts, is I've been working out. The me in my head still hasn't caught up with the me of my body. I take pictures every day to try to reconcile it, to make those hands shake, too. I gave up sugar and alcohol five months ago. I lift weights and do planks and pushups, ride the exercise bike and watch TV. I do it all in the middle of the night. The cat sometimes watches me, sometimes sleeps. I don't see myself joining a real gym, but then again, I didn't see myself doing any of this. A few months ago, I bought Pokémon cards in a fit of nostalgia. I didn't see myself doing that either. Maybe you think you know yourself, but you're still the worst prophet of your own life.
Four years ago, I thought I was a writer. Now, I think I'm an artist. I've tried for a local art grant twice and gotten close enough to winning each time to make me feel like I'm doing something right. Everything I wrote was a fantasy that's since come true. Maybe that scares me. I wrote a novella about three men who fell in love, and here the three of us are in this house making something we've never seen before. I don't doubt magic is real. We do it without thinking.
Shawn says he's seen a ghost in our house that looks like it came from one of my drawings. The ghost doesn't have eyes, he says, but he can tell where the eyes should be. Like all the ghosts we've seen here, it's shapeless and curious, following us from room to room like a pet. We live at an intersection. So much passes through.