introduction officially done

This book has been written, compiled, edited and arranged by Abu Bakr al-Uppsalawi at various locations around Uppland, which is a historical province of east-central Sweden. It was conceived, elaborated upon and edited more or less continually (but with varying intensity) starting around 2012 and reaching completion as I write this introduction, late 2019. The vast majority of these pieces however had already been written as of late 2018, with editing work dragging on lazily until April of 2020.

This book is thought of as a compendium of my personal spiritual and existential-philosophical development across many years of time; therefore, it is not correspondent to, nor representative of my current world-view entirely. Although most of its more intellectual and philosophical contents are merely immature approximations of positions I hold firmly to this day, there are many ideas, fantasies and ideals that has since burned off me like dead-wood after forest-fires.  Thus, the world-view interwoven into this text is almost like some embryonic spiritual pellet I have vomited forth when having tried to digest existence itself. For this reason, I consider many of these texts as a coming-of-age style of literature: a weirdly dark, vertiginous, hallucinatory and (hopefully) unsettling bildungsroman-esque labyrinth of poetry, stories, historical accounts, philosophical observations, et cetera. As you may notice, I feel it important to concede that many of the ideas presented hereafter are stupid, stupid, silly, ridiculous ideas. The most  pubescent remarks of anti-Christian ire, for example, I have left in the book, and I would lie if I told you that it was not left for reasons of nostalgia but also because I am a lazy fuck and I am so sick and tired of this shit book… I cannot edit this shit anymore and I just want to move on with my life. There are many passages and texts which recur; a poem, for instance, might also be found interwoven into some other,  longer story. It is what it is. It cannot fucking be bothered with anymore… but at least it is authentic! Yes, God knows that on many days, happy ones and gloomy ones, I despise this great excuse of literature, philosophy and theology, but it has been such an important cornerstone in my adult becoming that I simply cannot look the other way until I consider it finished for good. A lot of this material stems from my years of existential angst, drug experimentation and nihilism (I have not entirely moved on from these things but I have found other things as well that may complement them sufficiently, and I have found God to give me the deepest meaning in this existence), and it can be cringy and embarrassing many times to read it because it exposes such a pathetic and lousy character – my character. Furthermore, it is in my strong interest to note that this book is an Endcommunean work of art and it is my own pathetic Zibaldone di pensieri – as aforementioned, it is a vague collection of personal impressions, moral reflections, thoughts about God and religion, aphoristic utterances, philosophical observations, some socio-cultural analysis and some mediocre-at-best “poetry”.  It is a miscellanea of my subjective and personal existentialism. It is dedicated probably first and foremost to Isidor Ducasse, the Comte the Lautreamont. This work is basically my futile attempt at creating an own Maldoror, my own Golem of diabolic literature, for it is the crowning achievement of all poètes maudits, and I follow the spirit of Maldoror in its tracks. I will never be able to wash away that filthy sludge off my hands from turning those malodorous pages of human grime and evil… and as you can see, reader, I worship him well. And thank you for the angst, Lautreamont; well-deserved, yes, and well-given! By it, I am blemished forever.  

Hearken: this book is written to the glory of the Great Elk and of Inanna, my God and my Goddess. It is a dream which you hold in your hands: the contents of this book and the essences I speak of, which I present with a coating of naïve but vicious wording, is the dream of a world proud – and not ashamed – over being ugly. This book, this world, carries its ugliness like a yoke, and it does so not out of necessity, not as some forced draconian measure of punishment nor for the cause of some holy martyrdom... it does so not out of self-pity nor out of the quest for the pity of others, no, for it carries its ugliness with a thunder and a baritone, almost as if with a complex and intuitively contradictory confidence, and it does so out of a purely voluntary acceptance of its own responsibility over the womb-source of all things ugly with which it is immutably fixed. This world, this book, this responsibility serves no higher purpose for the betterment of the world as a whole, no – to hell with all that! I am not here for activism nor for some charitable cause; I do not want to save the world and I am not here to make some kind of favor or concession to anyone but myself. From the perspective of this book I am willing to say: fuck the world. Fuck this world, fuck your world. The fact of the matter is that it serves my world and it serves my world only… and it does so with untiring diligence and fervor! I am the author of my own world, and this book is a sum distillation of it. Am I hyperbolic? Well, what do you think of this statement: this book will change the life of every one willing to read it! And that is to say: if you are not changed from reading it, you do not understand it, and you are too stupid to process or ponder its viscera... or, on the other hand, perhaps you are just pointlessly uninterested by the contents of these pages of lugubrium (I am not sure any person of intellectual stature could see this book as uninteresting, nor could I imagine any serious psychologist or psychiatrist not taking interest in the captivating case of its author, but I suppose there are people for everything)... however, if you are changed for life by having read it, which you will become if you so do, your life shall never resume its ordinary and past tracks. And I make this a powerful and authentic claim. Yes, I choose to make this arrogant and bold statement as my very first of statements in order to purge myself from my own bravado: from here on, I do not have to worry about the toxins of this bravado because I have already made introductorily the ultimate statement of this bravado! And so why do I write this? Why am I bothered at all? Well, I write because I have no other outlet that can sufficiently process what I think, what I feel and what I do with my life, and I have to accommodate my anxieties and I have to nurture these world-views and all my paroxysmal ruminations willfully – lest they usurp my own golden scepter and my own ruby crown, and I cannot let that happen. I must get a hold of the darkness before the darkness gets a hold of me, lest it takes charge the ship on which they are supposed to be simple rowers! And this psychological mutiny of angst I will not tolerate! I simply just cannot allow that to happen. Yes, I have to accommodate my anxieties lest they get the upper hand, and I have decided, bit by bit, to do so by spilling the ink of love over life's empty papyri, and I do not yet know if I shall succeed or if I shall fail in this existential undertaking: the anxieties, I know, will start to haunt and move about like some frightful spectres in the air around me no matter what I write, but sometimes they might whisper something encouraging, and when that so happens I must listen – or else. My point is that if I do not tolerate these anxieties, and in so doing integrate them, then they shall indeed devour me. So, I write, and I continue to write. I write as to purge myself, because writing is thinking, and thinking is contemplating – which is cathartic and transformative. I write in order to lay to nakedness the horrid permeation of injustice and absurdity fundamentally constituent to the human condition and its experience, and I write in order to outline the riches and wealth in the amorphous and sludgy darkness it grows out of, and I will start with this right away (because to tell you the truth, I have nothing of higher value to do).