Growth of the Soil

I'm reading Growth of the Soil by Knut Hamsun. I notice the calluses where my fingers leave my palms. There's a part about potatoes being indifferent to man-made categories. They could be boiled with salt, stuffed as pre-wedding partitives, or mashed in soup kitchens. After that, I grab my paints, opting for the safe choices: Payne's Gray and King's Blue. They've thickened over time. I mean, they all do, we all do, eventually take on the shape of our containers. And when I do wipe the crust, that’s maybe when the soil grows, the second the mind gives room internally despite the noise others have packed on to our sensibilities, such as the idea of harvesting honey from Arabian jasmine, or falling to a soft place over and over again.