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Caption: Instagram's first novel. #TheValleyofAshes
Caption: #TheValleyofAshes During Nanowrimo, or National Novel Writing Month, I've been writing Instagram's first novel, called #TheValleyofAshes. It is being released as 30 Chapters over the course of 30 days in the month of November.
It's an interesting medium because I have to incorporate both words and images into the way I tell the story. To a certain extent, the story is limited by the photos I'm able to shoot, but is also enhanced because I can supplement words with visual storytelling.
It's been a fun experiment and I'd love for you to follow along on IG at @philipandersonedsel! I'm almost halfway through and I'll continue to update the story here on @Steller.
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Caption: #TheValleyOfAshes | Chapter I
It was a hollow sky which gave way to hollow earth, and all that stood in between was gray and unmemorable. The air smelled more like iron than oxygen, acidic in the nostril. Between buildings there grew sunken weeds of low ambition which were short and thick with a heaviness like earthen ash, until given enough time, when others would take their place.
A train rolled through town, but it didn’t stop because no one ever came or went. On the sidewalk near the shops on Main, feet moved sluggishly. Cars rolled by too, the sound of under-inflated tires sucking on the sticky asphalt. Reflections of faces, some worn and some withdrawn, distorted and stretched on the windows. And those that walked nodded to one another in understanding as they passed under that hollow sky in the Valley of Ashes.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter II
On occasion, sunlight broke through the grayness and fell in disjointed refraction, dividing sharply those momentarily anointed, and those condemned to shadow. It was these moments, and these moments alone, she knew what it was to breathe and thrive, and she saved those breaths for a day when she transcended that life in the valley.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter III
It was early November, and the air quivered at the cusp of change, as she sat in silence with a desperate stare at nothing, her feet dangling like string unraveling. She tried to imagine the world unlike a jukebox, recycling tired old tunes we all pretend to love, and came up empty. She needed a translation of the intangible, to hold a life outside that rusted valley. She needed to be something with weight and purpose, like her father’s old Winchester. She needed and so she left.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter IV
The wind, in blind, immodest joy ran it’s fingers through her hair. Somewhere in the distance, fallen leaves were gathered and burned and she reveled in the smell, got lost in the smell. And every time her eyelids closed, she opened them slowly, indulging even in the smallest moments. She drove onward, though not so much towards a place as away from one. When she did think about a destination, she imagined a place with shapes of people moving quickly and obscurely towards doors and stairs and homes with windows to the light, longing to be one of them.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter V
She pulled over, her lower back aching as the thrill of escape numbed her senses less and less. There were fields which stretched out to the horizon, curving towards the other side of the world, with no soul to claim them but her own.
She found a spot to let the evening sun wash over her and thought of the time she was sixteen, when her algebra teacher, low to the ground and mossy like an old stone, told her it was time for a “come to Jesus.” She was called “irresponsible” and “careless.” To her it it was merely that she had nothing in the valley to care about. All she saw was the endless effort to achieve just enough to call it a day, followed by the hope of unravelling just enough to call it a night. Her life seemed grander than theirs. The warmth of the sun was waning, but felt cleansing all the same.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter VI
She stopped at a laundromat, she thought maybe in Tennessee somewhere. The rows of stainless machines, the slush and chug of other people’s clothes, were calming to her but also reminded her she had no thing or place to belong to.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | VII
She heard the door chime behind her and a man, young and bearded said, These rows of machines work the fastest, somewhat apologetically for their awkward nearness in a room full of unused machines. He introduced himself as John, which she found exhaustingly plain. In the slow swirl of air that passed between them was the tenseness of youth. They stood and listened to the calm revolutions of clothes, like waves surrendering themselves one after another to the shore. Occasionally, the soundtrack of white noise was broken by John making small talk. He was an artist, a painter actually. She said she didn’t know anyone even painted anymore, but he wasn’t sure how to respond to that.
He finished his wash, dried his things, and walked towards the door. She quickly grabbed her Polaroid and snapped a photo of him as the door chimed on his way out. She thought about how sad it was, his life as an artist. She thought about the lonely late nights and beautiful blank canvasses ruined by smears of paint. She thought about how, maybe in another life, she could have belonged to a John.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter VIII
That night she dreamt in fits, of a desert made of letters shifting beneath her feet, forming and reforming the stories of other people’s lives, while the wind blew from the North carrying the rasped voices from dry, papery throats, yellowed with age, and everything was enveloped in ash.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter IX
The dull ache of the seatbelt jabbing into her hip awoke her. It was dark, but the first light of day, granular and embryonic, was beginning to break over the horizon, and the air held in it the rawness of morning. She tried to smooth the goosebumps on her skin as she stood and stretched. Nearby where she had parked on the side of the road, she saw a path splitting the long grass which leaned with the burden of fresh dew towards a field covered in fog. A silent force pulled her forward and she walked, her feet soaked from the wetness of it all.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter X
The sunrise let her know that she was real. Warmth whispered over her, giving names to feelings, scientific names, like those from a textbook. She briefly thought about the valley, but even those lonely, circular souls which paced down Main and the plastic husks of this and that which lined the grocery store shelves could not oppress her in this moment.
It was light the weight of diamonds, shimmering in the air around her.
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Caption: #TheValleyOfAshes | XI
Solitude sounded a lot like the incessant rumble of diesel machinery, she thought.
Hopelessly, endlessly loud.
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Caption: #TheValleyofAshes | Chapter XII
The warmth of the coffee ran through her hands like a contagion into the dimly-lit avenues and pale pathways of her veins, circulating in her heart before moving on. Those small sips felt liturgical, like a sacred and unaccompanied song.
She looked out at the quarter-mile stretch of concrete canvas, the caravan of eighteen-wheelers and the transitory creatures that blurred their lives over miles and miles and camped beneath the flood of fluorescents. These were her kin, for now, though soon she pictured herself amongst the rush and flux of the city.