the stupidity of googone

I have another couple of months work to save for a tractor and blown in insulation before I return home to the farm. I have moved companies and am working in a large camp perched lucratively beside a large black gash in the snowy boreal forest. It is surrounded by frosty poplars, under great plumes of oily steam with beams of lights thrusting skyward. The trailers are perfectly aligned with matching porch lights lit at the same frequencies. My job is to remove all evidence of industrial and human debris from surfaces and appliances: I am a janitor.

There is a large boot room one first enters that is the threshold of this establishment and where the black gooey bitumen encroaches daily carried in on boots, gloves, PPE, etc. The rules for removal of all outside clothing is strict and they are left on hangers, shelves and the floor of this room. The union workers ("boys" as they are called) strip down to sweats, longjohns, moccasin or sneakers and then exit the boot room into the more easily managed neutrality of the halls and diningroom. Apart from a "GetRDone" poster one could then be anywhere.

One of the tools of my trade is a solvent called googone that I am required to use. After the room is assembled in order, scrubbed and vacuumed, I erase every blot of the oilsand that dared enter and interior spaces are as clean as is necessary to forget real consequence.

The joyful sky ballet of the ravens or the butt end of a bobcat sneaking back into the poplars and the full blue moon shining her light over rows of endless trailers is nature intruding in this carefully controlled world. I worry that there may soon be a substance equivalent to googone to rub out moon light or coyote tracks, lest the power of the natural world detract from the business at hand.