Turning 50: My treat!
Video: 3 minutes
Life becomes magical when beliefs are let go, mistakes are embraced, and plans are allowed to change. Life is a mystery, a struggle, a journey and a miracle that I have had the pleasure of experiencing in this form already for half a century. That is by far the best birthday present anyone can wish for! Now the birthday boy will treat and I do this by means of a double present.
The first is a digital version of G.K. Chesterton’s The Defendant. Having been written very early in the 20th century, this gathering of essays now belongs to the public domain, and it’s not for nothing that Chesterton emerged earlier in the Magical section of this website. Because if there is one author who’s ability to transmit his genuine sense of wonder and unique feel for paradox via stories, it’s Chesterton.
In his Defendant series he’s making cases why we should defend illusive topics like Rash Vows, Skeletons, Nonsense, Useful Information, Farce, or Baby Worship. In his Defence of Ugly Things for instance, he argues that the worst offenders against valuing the variety of life were the Greeks – much more than the Jews, as he states in the following paragraph:
“The tyrants and deceivers of mankind in this matter have been the Greeks. All their splendid work for civilization ought not to have wholly blinded us to the fact of their great and terrible sin against the variety of life. It is a remarkable fact that while the Jews have long ago been rebelled against and accused of blighting the world with a stringent and one-sided ethical standard, nobody has noticed that the Greeks have committed us to an infinitely more horrible asceticism—an asceticism of the fancy, a worship of one aesthetic type alone. Jewish severity had at least common-sense as its basis; it recognised that men lived in a world of fact, and that if a man married within the degrees of blood certain consequences might follow. But they did not starve their instinct for contrasts and combinations; their prophets gave two wings to the ox and any number of eyes to the cherubim with all the riotous ingenuity of Lewis Carroll. But the Greeks carried their police regulation into elfland; they vetoed not the actual adulteries of the earth but the wild weddings of ideas, and forbade the banns of thought.”
Chesterton’s ‘The Defendant’ can be downloaded below as EPub or PDF files, and I wish you jolly reading with these marvellous stories.
Secondly the Dutch reading audience was treated to my Dutch translation of Stephen Mitchell’s English version of the Tao Te Ching. What was initially a personal study project, has transformed into a digital version which I’m happy to offer any of you who read Dutch via the button below. Since I am celebrating my 50th birthday in China, it is only fitting to share this special work with you.
Finally, I share a video below in which a short song introduces a Tai Chi video that is a nice reflection of my training so far.
The Defendant
by G.K. Chesterton
Download the EPub version via the yellow button. Download the PDF version via the black button below.
Tao Te Ching - Dutch translation!
Tao Te Ching, one of the classic texts of Chinese Taoism, gives an insight into the world beyond thinking and direction of how to get there.
Have fun reading and discovering!
Jolly greetings,
Erik Stout
Featured image: mastenenvlaggen.nl
English translation to my 11-verse Dutch poem:
Erik 50 song
Today I’m 50
Still really busy
Study Tai Chi
Makes me really happy
So let’s train
I’m gonna mean it
‘Cuz manifesting
Is in my genes
Making music
We can learn
An instrument
Can be commanded
Let us dance
Grab your chance
Life is now
So let it shine
The second half
Has now begun
Where are the cake
And the balloons?
Now let me move
From here to there
It may be close
It may be far
Not yet settled
That will come
When the time is right
The bell will sound
Until that time
I’m travelling
Much learning and
More and more wise
An open view
One with nature
An open attitude
Return to pure
Now I’m 50
So look and see
I am in China
And study Tai Chi