"I was contemptuous of 'facts' for I came to know that no accumulation of facts constitutes knowledge, and no impersonal knowledge constitutes the intimacy of knowing."
Joyce Carol Oates, in The Girl with the Blackened Eye

I don't suffer facts gladly either.  I get the impression my mind toys with me, daring me to live by facts alone.  I do usher a great deal of information across my threshold - and usher the bulk of it right back out the galley way, as I call to the skittering factoids, 'I'll google you next week, we'll do lunch!'

I really don't want poems and constitutional amendments lounging around the living room when I have work to do.  They can be a little testy when I get their names mixed up and - arrogance?  Sheesh!  They're insufferable bores that way.  Wiki this.  Pedia that -- what a bunch of eggheads.

'Mind a sieve?  Try bigger noodles' was a possible title for this piece  But it's not a question of big vs small ideas.  It's more about essence.

Right about now, you might be writing me off as a bird brain.  If you are, our minds have no great affinity for each other anyway.  Mine likes the ones who rest on intuitive, contemplative, humble laurels.  Those who don't avoid being sieves.  There's air and flux in sievedom.  Wheat from chaff, gold from silt, forest from trees.  In art, in life, editing can be a very good thing.  I say, let your mind breathe free;  she will sieve, and serve, you well.

photo 'Anna's Hummingbird drinking from feeder in San Diego County' GNU Free Documentation License