G'day to you! Thanks for clicking by. Coffee's on... virtual treats are sitting waiting so help yourself. C'mon over to the VIP table while I tell you about Ms. Serpentfoot Serpentfoot...
POETRY, Ga. — Off Georgia State Route 100, at the edge of Chattooga County, across from a row of chicken houses, in front of a forest, inside a beige trailer, next to a stationary bike and a marching band drum and two snakeskins and boxes of old newspapers and a rusty stapler and books about philosophy, poetry and nude beaches, Serpentfoot sits on a ripped red couch.
"Black holes!" Serpentfoot says.
"The cosmos!" she says.
"Dog eat dog!"
"Last suppers!"
She continues on like this, screeching what appears to be nonsense for about 90 seconds. But she swears her words have meaning. She swears she's spreading the gospel of her one-member church, Our Greater Self.
Born Carolyn Marjorie Ann Clay, Serpentfoot has been northwest Georgia's ambassador of weird for five decades now. She's feuded with churches, founded a writer's colony, withdrawn into the wilderness, stripped nude at a county commission meeting and unsuccessfully sued a group of elected officials for nine figures.
On Oct. 22, Serpentfoot will turn 82. Rivers of wrinkles run through her hollow cheeks. Red bags sit below her eyes. She knows the end is nigh.
Which is why she's here, inside her tornado-mess of a trailer, rattling off these words. Words carry weight, she knows. Words can change a life.
And so she wants to alter her name again, to these words. All 101 of them. And while they seem disparate, Serpentfoot says they are held together by the invisible glue of life. Everything in the universe is connected: That's the message of her ministry.
When we die, our bodies are for the animals and plants we leave behind. But we should leave more than that, Serpentfoot believes. We should leave a message in the form of our names. Your mantra in life should be scrawled across the top of the obituary section.
Here is Carolyn Clay, aka Ms Serpentfoot Serpentfoot''s proposed 100 word name:
Nofoot Allfoot-69-mouth-tail-solids-liquids-gases-animals-vegetable-mineral-all-predators-and-prey-that-consume-and-move-with-feet-fins-wings-wheels-canes-roots-limbs-vines-landslides-dust-wind-water-fire-ice-gravity-vacuums-black-holes-going-over-under-around-and-through-Our-Greater-Self-our-habitat-the-cosmos-of-which-we-are-but-part-and-where-all-life-feeds-upon-other-life-from-the-smallest-atoms-or-bacteria-to-the-great-black-holes-and-dog-eat-dog-and-“Last-Suppers”-where-we-are-what-we-eat-or-consume-and-each-lives-on-in-the-other…∞ Serpentfoot
Dang! That's almost as long as the offocial name of Bangkok (which I won't get into here...).
There's a lot more to this story than I can put in one post so if you ache for the rest of the tale, go to:
See ya, eh!
Bob
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