At Cross Purposes

On the one hand, I have an urge to discard all of my unneeded factoids, like a bomber crew frantically tossing stuff overboard because a fuel leak otherwise may leave the plane crippled, short of its goal.

What factoids?  Oh, for example, in the heat of summer, the clarity of the water inside the burst tar bubbles that lined the very edge of the road where I grew up.  The myth, or reality, of the head of Ted Williams sitting in a frozen vault.  But at least 100,000 more. And "Everything Must Go!"

Without the factoids, does anything of me remain?  Perhaps that's the point.  Let it all become confetti.

And yet, when an artist labors to create meaning from a blank canvas, the meaning is built up from the meaningless.  Consider, for example, this first paragraph of a Leonid Rankov story, with its details almost all of which could be otherwise, as he leads us towards things of more importance -- dolphins, idiots savants, the diaspora:

Already a light rain had begun to fall.  It was the first October rain, always unexpected after the close humidity of summer days.  It mixed in with the smell of asphalt and the swollen blades of grass in the lawns, spotted the windshields with beads, hung in the air from the grey clouds to the very earth.  

"Speak, Memory!"