I never entirely understood how it happened. I found a flower on the sidewalk and brought it home. It never blossomed. I never got to see what it was. But it didn’t precisely die, either. So I kept it. Changed the water. It appeared to remain a living bud, but neither grew nor rotted.

The thing is this; whenever I even start to imagine it, the bud begins to blossom in my mind’s eye — without my participation — slowly, deliberately, and uniquely. Each time I think about it, the way it blossoms changes explicitly, and each new mode seems to be teaching me something elemental, directly reconfiguring my intelligence by exposing me to progressions of shapes.

Sometimes the blossoming implies music, or even mathematical ideas. Sometimes I learn things about the nature of dimensionality. Or uncommon features hidden in language. The flower never fully opens, even during these strange events in my mind. I haven’t entirely understood what is happening yet. I found a flower on the sidewalk, and brought it home. It refused to blossom. In the ordinary way.