Thanks to the virtually unfettered expansion of corporate power, America at the dawn of the new millennium is painful to behold. Our physical environment is despoiled by the ubiquitous clamor of commercial appeals, our psyches contorted by their lies. But to proclaim that we are awash in corporate propaganda elicits a big jaded yawn. And this is the scary part: the fact that we have come to accept advertising as a fully integrated part of our lives.

With ads serving as the sometimes subliminal, usually garish wallpaper of life, it's easy--seductive, even--to claim that we are immune to their power. Which is exactly where marketers want us: in complete, cocky, alcoholic-worthy denial. Rest assured, friends, if it wasn't wildly effective, they wouldn't throw away $295 billion a year just for the sadistic pleasure of hearing us hum their jingles while we wait for the elevator.

Our minds having been systematically implanted, harvested and bundled off to market, even our outrage has withered. Most of us, whether or not we are conscious of it, have succumbed and are in fact abetting corporations in their merchandising of our hopes and fears.

Consider this chilling slice of zeitgeist.

Recently, a very bright high school senior challenged me thus: "What difference does it make," he asked, "if you like a particular style because some corporation hyped it or if you like it just because you like it? You'll never know why, and either way you still like the damn shirt and so you wear it." This sort of "thinking" reflects a conscious collapse of will and wholesale acquiescence to corporate dominion. Certainly we have always been influenced by our surrounding culture. But never before have we been commodified from cradle to grave. Nor have we ever so blindly obeyed those who would define our tastes and then sell us the means to satiate those prefabricated desires.

If this young man's rationalization is any indication of a trend (and sales of Gap, et al, t-shirts do not equivocate on the matter), then society has reached the point where not only are we not sure if what we're having is an original thought--we don't care! Even the sanctity of our dream-time is not inviolable. Trust me, if your REM cycle does not occasionally regurgitate a brand named image, stay tuned.

Equally disturbing is the fact that, aside from a dedicated core of college campus activists, so many among us (like my indifferent trig student) are oblivious to the consequences of our choices in apparel. Unless of course these human billboards actually support the policies of the corporations for whom they shill. In that case, why not spell it out with a shirt that announces "I support sweatshop labor and trickle-up economics"?

By way of analogy, imagine Americans as inmates of a vast corporate prison. It's a stretch, I know, but try. And in this prison with its glass ceilings and invisible walls, we toil in the prison laundry or at the manufacture of license plates. Come quittin' time, and clutching our pathetic remuneration in hand, we stampede each other on the way to the commissary and line up to purchase "Visit Beautiful San Quentin" T-shirts. Back here in real life, those shirts say Banana Republic. Which is the not-so -metaphorical place where so many 21st century wage slaves attempt to cobble together an existence circumscribed by the New World Order. Meanwhile, whatever marketing sub-genius had the audacity to create a chain-store homage to that vile imperialist invention was ominously prescient and should be stopped before we're all living in subdivisions named Missile Defenseland, Superfund Cleanup Estates or Plantation Justice. And wearing the corresponding t-shirts to demonstrate our fealty.

Years ago I wrote a poem musing about people who blithely sport corporate logos on their hats, t-shirts and so on. It remains a source of utter bafflement why anyone would pay for the privilege of advertising the images of corporations that overcharge consumers, trash ecosystems, and indenture entire Third World Countries as a matter of policy. I made it a point of honor never to rent out space on my body to corporate profiteers-especially when it's me that's paying the rent! I mean, I don't even know Tommy Hilfiger--why would I want him broadcasting from atop my tits?

Alas, such integrity is no longer possible. Suddenly, it's a challenge to find inexpensive clothing without a logo. We are being forced to pay a premium for having the gall to demand ad-free clothing. These days, I can't get department store undies without a snappy ad tag like Hanes Her Way rimming my belly. I don't think Old Navy even sells a garment without its imprint front and center. And forget about shoes. Once Nike's logo became a noun unto itself, it was all over.

Industry apologists crow that they put kids through college, enable single moms to afford day care-all they have to do is have their entire car painted to comprise one jumbo, round the clock, roving billboard. Even if this does help a handful of working stiffs, where is the dignity driving around town in a car hawking Joe Camel? And where will it end? One wonders how much these companies might pay to have their logos tattooed on our foreheads. Or will we pay them? Perhaps it is not at all ironic that many of these symbols (viz, Chanel's over-lapping back to back C's) very closely resemble the graphics you see burned into a steer's rump.

The point that no one is making is this: if all these magnanimous corporations simply paid their workers a living wage, people wouldn't have to whore their vehicles just to make ends meet.

And so, absent any resistance on the part of consumers--much less citizens-- they continue to infect us with advertising that manipulates our brains with the finesse of a master hypnotist. Glassy-eyed, we all go charging into malls to buy more products that advertise those same products that influence more people to buy more ---- it never ends! Because we collude with our handlers. Our corporate-colonized minds herd our bodies like cattle into the marketplace. But unlike cattle, we don't put up a fight; no, we eagerly line up and pay to assume the mark of the corporate beast.

Why do you think they call it branding?

I've been swimming in public pools throughout the Bay Area for nearly forty years, from Red Cross lessons to AAU and Masters competition and now, finally, I just do laps for me. It was much later in life that I began meditating, a practice which did not come as easily as my facility with the backstroke. But oh so gradually, my mindfulness muscles are beginning to display the tone and conditioning that comes from disciplined exercise. This after years of frustration, of practicing just because I thought it was good for me, and at best enduring every jagged breath I was supposed to non-judgmentally observe. I still feel that way sometimes, thought lately I have been touched by Grace, feeling occasional glimmers of peace. Sometimes entire minutes pass without the grip and gnash of anxiety-both while sitting and during my chop-wood-carry-water life.

And so it was today as I made my way to the pool, slipped into my swimsuit and onto the pool deck. It was more crowded than usual. I could feel frustration hissing from the fast lane like grease spattering off a hot skillet. Though I am a fast swimmer I chose the slow lane, not wanting to risk my new-found mellowness in that roiling cauldron. I eased into the shallow end, adjusting my cap and goggles. Pushing off the bottom I plunged in, taking several languid breaststrokes under water. Immediately I noticed that something was very different, what was it? The waterit was so soft. I was enveloped in the softest creamiest substance I've ever encountered! Astonished to the point of disorientation, I thought: This isn't water at all, it couldn't be. I have a long-term relationship with water, but we're just friends. Whatever I'm floating in now is embracing me like the most tender of lovers. My left brain searched wildly for explanations. Perhaps the Park & Rec Department had added some new chemical to the water, changing its very molecular structure. Or maybe I'd slipped into a parallel universe and had, in fact, become an alien from a dry planet experiencing water for the first time. The truth had to be this outrageous. I've known water all my life-has it always felt like this? Have I been so busy working out, counting laps, and passing slowpokes that I've missed out on this most sensual of sensations, this unconditional caressing of my flesh, this sense of being utterly supported by a force that is at the same time completely yielding.

Today, I did not do laps. No, I was transported by this exquisite medium, effortlessly. Today I luxuriated in the grace of each stroke and arch, every flutter and glide. I reveled in the glory in which I was held. And when, towards the end of my swim, familiarity began to dull the luster of my reverie, I left the pool gingerly in hopes that I might never, ever leave the water.

From the crest of the highway overlooking Pacifica State Beach, the surfers in their black wetsuits looked like a flock of large waterbirds bobbing on the waves, patiently awaiting the next swell. And from that vantage point, I could see that the swells were coming all right, nicely shaped--round and hollow--but much too small to do justice to a surf contest. But this was the appointed day and everyone was here and so of course they had to go through with it. There was loud rocker music drowning out the sound of gentle shore-break. There were aluminum trays of coleslaw and slabs of meat being grilled under tents flapping in the chilly November wind. Dozens of surfers turned out, maybe a hundred. Mostly guys, mostly white, all impossibly young and lean as colts. And every one of them pumped those puny waves for all the points they could wring out of them, cutting left and right, riding the lip, ripping and carving up and down each whopping two-foot face.

About halfway into the competition those of us on shore became acutely aware that it had begun to rain, ever so slightly, though the droplets were plump, suggestive of a storm to come. The sky was a ponderous gun-metal gray, the clouds soft as silk, all rippling spines and crevices swirling from the Santa Cruz Mountains to the horizon. Surfer girlfriends shivered on the cold, damp sand, their camcorders dutifully preserving the event for later analysis or laughs or storage in a box in the basement. Further down the beach, I spied a small notice declaring the water contaminated and unsafe for swimming or other water contact. A hundred yards beyond that, two prominent red signs on either side of a culvert cautioned "Pumps may start at any time"-which they promptly did. I had to pick up my pace to avoid what was at first a trickle, then a great gushing flood of bacterial creek runoff and sewer spillage disgorging from a pipe under the Pacific Coast Highway and aimed directly into the ocean. A couple of Mid-western tourists on their honeymoon stared, baffled at first, then hurried towards the other end of the beach, heads bowed into the wind. Seagulls padded unconcerned in the shallows where the waste met the sea. I watched one surfer approach the runoff. Fresh from the competition and walking back to his car, he hesitated, thought about it for a moment, but somehow couldn't bring himself to march his neoprene-swathed feet right through that tainted stream. It's different when you're out in the water. You can't see it; you can't feel anything but the frosty slap of the sea, the taste of salt, the smell of an approaching squall. Enveloped by the ocean it's easy to conjure the illusion that you are communing with nature at her most elemental and pristine. But here on land, the surfer walks cautiously around the effluent, away from the beach, and back into the parking lot. He rinses his wetsuit, downs a cold one, and heads home.

It could be certifiable proof that I am hopelessly passe, or maybe my age is showing like a sagging slip, but I just don't get the whole tattoo mania. Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I'll admit that when I was 16 years old I went down to Lyle Tuttle's Studio fully intending to make my parents boil. When told I had to be 18, I confess, I was secretly relieved. I wasn't ready to make that kind of a commitment and I knew it. And God only knows what bubble-gummy Sixties flower power doo-dad I'd be stuck with today. But there's another problem with tattoos, a sinister factor that disturbs me on a political level, one that is of no apparent concern to today's youth--it's the matter of identifiability.

Let's say one day I get run over downtown by a bike messenger-hard to imagine, I know, but stay with me. So, the cop asks what did he look like. Ummm, skinny white twentysomething dressed in black, pierced eyebrow, Austin Powers glasses. Oh, the cop will roll his eyes, that's really an unusual look here in San Francisco-thanks for narrowing it down for us. Wait, I yelp, coming out of shock, he had a big red Tasmanian Devil tattooed on his left shoulder! And now the search can begin.

My point is this: I came of age in the 60s and 70s when conspiracies and counter-intelligence programs were lurking under every consciousness raising group. Everything was a government plot aimed at further empowering the power elite. Now, this is still the case, of course, but people here are so busy making money that we are no longer disturbed by what the government does as long as it's doing it to someone else. Well, you can color me old-fashioned, but I keep imagining the field day an undisguised police state would have with so many people already branded for life. They'll start out sorting us by theme. Simple monochrome barbed-wire types in Barracks A; colorful gender-identity politicos in Cell-block B. Heck, we're self-inflicting our own built-in, bar-coding system! With the unprecedented amount of information the government has already amassed in each of our files, why would anyone want to be more memorable? And maybe that's just the problem. Steeped as we are in the culture of celebrity, perhaps this is yet another way our depressingly desperate need to be noticed has eclipsed our common sense, derailed our very instinct for self-preservation. Consider, for a moment, Kathy Solia, the former SLA guerrilla who was recently flushed out of hiding after 23 years underground. How long do you think she would have gone undetected with the stern visage of Chairman Mao indelibly etched into her left flank?