It's a foggy, dreary morning in San Francisco, and for some reason, those are the best ones. An opportunity to cozy up on the couch with my computer, run statistical models, and reflect on the past week.

One of my co-workers, an MIT prof visiting from Boston, told me yesterday that he can't see me without also seeing my giant wolf costume. We talked a little about Anthro New England, the convention I went to last week on the East Coast, and how to build knowledge bridges.

There was a time, not long ago really, where I had so many filters on my experience that such conversations would have made me really nervous. I would have suspiciously combed through every comment, worrying about what each word meant, certain they dripped with meaning. And I'm sure there are people who talk like that out there. In fact, I know that's the case because previously I would attract precisely those people.

But that's in the past, and in the present, I live with extraordinary people for whom love is the anchor and foundation of our daily lives. When I find myself falling back into that hole, I just look back in the mirror, and see what my face looks like when I'm worrying about why someone would hurt me. Do you know what it looks like? It's looks like the same loving face who likes to go out as a big fluffy wolf and who write songs about his walks into work.

I had a dream last night about the long cross-country road trips I used to do with my dad, except this time we were on a train, and it was actually a roller-coaster. The stresses of being a young adult, finding your place, and falling with the wrong people have distracted me sometimes from the rich treasures I've received. For all the problems in the world, I am so grateful for the love I have received from my parents, for the love they have put into me, which shines brightly through my eyes.

As the clouds lift from my experience, and as the clouds descend over my favorite city, I find myself writing songs again. Happy songs about being ready to fall in love again. I'll be playing two of them this Thursday at Sacred Grounds on my ukulele.

The joy of life is just living it. Not trying to win something, justifying my existence as if it exists perilously on the edge between worthwhile and worthless. Some of us are just meant to be big fluffy dogs who play songs, and we can die happy doing it.

Well, that and one more thing. Some of us -- all of us? -- are also meant to love, and it's time to let that back into my heart.

End-of-message.

I want to take a moment to talk about fear, and I'll begin by asking a simple question:

"Can you love yourself the way a dog loves you?"

Or perhaps more to the point:

"Can you love someone else the way a dog would?"

It's this fact that has been ringing in my ears lately, that the thing that scares us the most is the power -- the overwhelming, take-over-your-life power -- of our love. It makes us do crazy things. And most frightening of all is how our love causes us to surrender.

We live in a culture where there is a primary driving force: Become the master of your domain. Buy things. Advance. Compare yourself to others (but don't admit to it). If only we can quit smoking, lose weight, become more personable, grow smarter, shrewder, more popular, then and only then can we hold our heads up high. The wealthy in our country have convinced us that we're not even entitled to healthcare or retirement unless we do all these things because, after all, they did it, although usually with the help of Daddy (but no one wants to admit that).

But what if you could hold your head up high for a different reason entirely? What if you could hold your head up high because you listen to your heart? What if, when we find ourselves moments away from death, surrounded by our friends and family, it's not the "sacrifices" we made to "survive" that we are grateful for, but the quality of our love? The openness with which we listened to our hearts?

I've been hurt by my love, like everyone else. When that switch flips on in me, the buildings flip over, the sky turns yellow, and the ground melts below. All the details of the focus of my affections become the world. Her eyes. Her curves. Her voice.

And to my surprise lately, HIS eyes, HIS curves, HIS voice. Nothing else exists. It's one of the most vulnerable states we can be in, this love. It takes on journeys we aren't always ready for, journeys we can't always explain or justify to our friends and family.

Over the weekend, something hit me that I want to share. Growing up, I always knew that somewhere, deep down inside, I wasn't entirely what I seemed. But that's all I knew. There were just these disjoint images, pieces of the puzzle that drew me without explanation. These pieces are what the world calls fetishes. Supposed aberrations of lust. I took these pieces to mean there was something broken in me, and I did as much as I could do to squash them, break free of them, become normal and acceptable. Except I couldn't, no matter how hard I tried.

It wasn't until I moved to San Francisco that I realized I wasn't the only one. In fact, I've since learned that it's likely that the only unusual thing is not to have them. But even more unusual is to admit to them. Especially on a forum like Facebook, where the cultural primary drive addicts us like cigarettes.

A wise man once told me that the thing that scares us the most is to do something we've never seen someone else do. That the vast majority of us simply look to our neighbors to determine whether what we're doing is okay. That facing your anxiety and fear when you do something the world hasn't seen before, or at least in your context, is the lock key to freedom.

Equipped with this insight, I was able to open up to something much deeper this weekend. What I realized is that just as, when we fall in love with a person, it's the details that drive us crazy and block out the rest of the world, as it is with our relationship to the cosmos. That these fetishes we fear are no different from the devotion we feel to each other. We have no choice but to surrender to them because that is the nature of love. The only difference is that, just as we cannot prove that we have a soul to our thinking eyes, we cannot see the object of our cosmic affections, and this is why we think they're aberrations.

I'm in love with someone who understands this. When we first met, he didn't shy away from my sexuality, he encouraged me to express it. It's an openness he earned from coming out gay as a young man in an oppressive, sad community in the middle of the country. The kind of oppressive, sad communities that turn people into livestock across our nation, holing themselves away in their isolated houses and apartments, limiting their experiences so that they can feel "safe" while they send other people's children off to wars of their own creation so they can feel even "safer". Communities that listen to fear instead of love.

This man I'm in love with, who has overcome so much, said something to me last night that no one else has ever said to me, and I want to share it with you. He said, "people like you, with your drive to serve… you're sacred."

It's a message we rarely hear. We despise, or merely tolerate those who serve us. We aspire to have others serve us, not the other way around. And yet so many of us go to church, where we admire man's greatest servant, hung up on a cross, like some alien being from another world. We tell ourselves he loves us. Jesus is our dog, and we go to see him to get a break from ourselves.

But there are those among us who don't merely see the love a dog gives us and chuckle, flush with flattery. There are those of us who look into a dog's eyes and see our own. We see the light shining from behind those eyes and recognize the light that shines inside of us. We envy dogs for their fearlessness in the face of their own love.

When I am on my deathbed, looking over my life, I dream that the people who are around me, and the people I will have lost by that moment, will recognize me as the beautiful dog I am. I dream that we will be united by our mutual appreciation for the surrender of love. I dream that my life will be filled with people who have given in to their true nature, whatever that may be, unabashed and fearless. In my passing moments, I hope they will feel the wind on their faces like a big wet tongue, and I hope their hearts will be full.

As I was running in Golden Gate Park this evening I discovered I had transformed back from a coyote and into a man running with the coyote's shadow. The drone grew louder and Ravi Shankar's frail fingers straddled the frets of his sitar. A melody swept up from the ground below as I cut through the wind.

Then I came across a girl who was sitting along the path and crying. She sobbed that she had lost her mother and she pointed to the other side of the road where buildings were burning and trees crumbled before a deafening roar. Despite the terrible landscape the girl's sobs had quieted and I fell asleep at her feet, her arms wrapped around my coyote neck, her face nuzzled into my own.

The skies turned to a violet yellow and the stars shone brightly down on us two. They shone brightly because it is not the few who carry the divine revelation. It is ALL creatures who carry it.

Sitting in a cafe, working on my laptop, when the hair starts to raise on the back of my neck. My ears perk up and I look around. What is giving me this chill?

Then I see, at a table next to me, two men. Neither of them have their feet planted on the ground, but one of them is fidgeting. The other is looking at him intently, using words like "fuck" and "what's wrong with you". And suddenly, it hits me, that one man has pulled the other away from his community, to a lonely table out by Duboce Park, where he expects no one to be able to hear him demean and place the other down.

So what do I do? I look at them. I make them aware that someone can see what is going on. And you can see the abusive man stare me back. He wants to intimidate me -- this is none of your business! -- but he is also afraid. Someone is calling him out.

You can't abuse someone when other people see it. You can't ride high on your horse, boosting your fragile ego on the back of someone else, when everyone can see you doing it.

Well, that's not exactly true.

I have a friend who lived for four years in Asia. He hates some of the cultures he saw there. Because in many Asian cultures, emotional abuse is not just common, it is expected. If you chew someone out and demean them, and someone else sees it, they will join in the abuse. In those cultures, emotional poverty is epidemic.

Emotional strength is not something we have a right to. You can be born into such emotionally damaged situations that no one will come to help you. Heck, you can be born in a relatively stable culture, but if everyone agrees that they can get their jollies by placing you down, they will. They will call themselves upstanding citizens while they bully their fellow comrades at the first chance they get. We see these people all the time on TV. They crave power and they often get it.

You may not have a right to feel safe, but you do have the need. And sometimes, that need is enough.

In shame-based Asian cultures, to no one's surprise, you see the rise of avatars, alter egos, identities that provide a safe haven. Japan is one of the most creative, inventive cultures we have on this planet, with a huge emphasis on living in alternate realities, living out your fantasies in safe harbors.

Art is the expression of our need. The need to feel safe, to feel like we can share ourselves unabashedly. To feel heard, the yearning of our inner fears and joys to find community.

This weekend, I will travel to Napa with two people I deeply respect, where we are going to explore making art together. We are going to explore the thoughts and feelings we have that we cannot share in our normal day-to-day experience. And just like countless artists who have come before us, we will push the envelope and stare the things that frighten us straight in the face.

So this weekend, if you are walking through the city, or alone in the country, and you hear a pack of coyotes howling in the distance, I hope you think of us, and wish us luck.

Aarrooooo!!

Life is about transformation. Breaking free of the chains that hang from your body and bind you to your old perceptions. You break free but then the chains emerge again. What is one to do? What is freedom in this predicament?

Freedom is owning the chains that bind you.

Jesus walked with dignity as he bore the cross. The billion people line up in their little pews every Sunday to contemplate the ultimate submission of the ultimate creator and destroyer. It's a deep need that balances us all.

As life takes you by the jugular, as the great tidal wave washes through you, as you surrender to the great white light of nothingness from which you came and from which you will go, that is where dignity rises up and envelopes you.

You can experience it lying down in a church as the piano sings out beautiful hymns. You can experience it in a room full of monks as the great chants rise within you all. And you can experience it every time you take that leap of faith, that step outside of the normal, that risk of ego death for the sake of something greater.

In every great movie there is a key moment at the end of Act II. It is the moment when the protagonist makes a choice. To give up something he values -- often his life -- for the sake of something greater. In the movies, what at first appears to be death is actually rebirth. It is the core of the hero's journey we live everyday.

I have been hunting these people down. People who hold the keys to sexuality, freedom, and creativity. I've stood in awe as I saw them do all the things I was too afraid to do myself.

So imagine my surprise as I stood there, this time draped in my own symbols of masculinity, utility, and worth. I took a look in the mirror. Oh my God, what am I doing? What have I become?

That was when I realized I, too, hold one of those keys. And it's time I used it.