Many Happy Returns, Max!

Variations on Coco Chanel's little black dress, or LBD, "Chanel: The Legend" exhibition, Kunstmuseum, The Hague, 2014

Today you share a birthday with Janis Joplin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Dōgen,

Founder of the Sōtō school of Zen,

And likewise with Robert E. Lee and Dolly Parton.

You knew all that when you were ten!

But take another look at those partyers (some men):

• The Lord never bought Janis a Mercedes-Benz;

• Coco Chanel claimed Dolly (no LBD!!) lacked fashion sense;

• Lee's great victory at Chancellorsville was a debacle;

• The House of Usher, unfortunately, fell;

• And Dōgen lost his bucket down a well.

Such were the ragtag rewards of Fame

For birthday girls and boys in all but name.

If she thus treats her chosen few

What are the rest of us to do?*

There's little consolation in this sample;

Your birthmates set a bad example!

Don't do what Dōgen recommended

And meditate on nothing, but on self,

To which the cosmos lies extended

In all its cockamamie wealth!

*Cf. Samuel Hoffenstein:

"Well, if such as these could be

So foredoomed to misery,

And Fate despise her own elect—

What the deuce do you expect?"

Monday, January 19, 2026