The Gold Coast is admired for beaches that embody the name. It reflects not the golden sands, but it’s cost. Not the cost of staying or of experiencing, but the coast of its destruction. This coastline once gleamed with authenticity and was evocative in its beauty, but what once was real must be spoiled. As all else is stripped away by the invisible hand of the traveler, so is this stretch of sand.
Before the coast was deemed golden, it was known by the name the South Coast, being south of Brisbane. A simple name for a simpler time. As the material amassed in this area, the prices inflated rapidly, thus bestowing a new name — the Gold Coast. Meaning is consumed, and the material must substitute for it, else what remained would have been utterly insubstantial. This is the reoccurring pattern of ruination that is observed across the world. Everything is becoming indistinguishably artificial. One of the beaches here is named Miami in hopes that it will reflect an identity with Florida, one of the most meaningless places in America. It foregoes its own destiny and aspires to be like lesser places, yearning to be as shallow as everywhere else. They are in a race to the bottom, striving for an abject existence.
With the ever-rising floors of the high rise, the beauty and charm of these beaches dissolve. Rawness and magnificence are coated in plates of concrete, consumption, and the footprint of the tourist. Who gave them such power over the world? They demand decadence in wild lands, taming all of its primitive energy for a manufactured experience. They reshape landscapes with wicked abandon, bottling nature’s soul in brick and stone. All that is left is a thin strip of sand that remains free from the dictatorial imposition of the traveler. Only, that is a lie as well. The traveler demands the strip of sand. The beach did not survive the onslaught of the tourist. They gawk at it like an animal in the zoo; salivate over it like a dog does for its food. They trap the remnants of the real in designated areas which paradoxically destroys it. At half-past four, the beaches are covered in the shadows of the high rises, denying the warmth of the sun. It fights with the material to restore balance. It’s rays sneak through wherever they can, energizing the sand with warmth. The beach is only valuable when experienced with the sun, yet the greed of the tourist has consumed that which he demands. When the blight of the towers obstructs the sun, they abandon the beach and move into the material world. For a brief moment, the natural is set free, but it is as fallacious as a wild animal in a zoo.
Hot Air Ballooning
The sun awakens over inland hills as a flame ignites the air that will transcend this place. It seems as though fire always brings us from a simpler world into a more ethereal. Fire brought us forward cognitively, leaping us ahead of other primates millions of years ago. Fire forged weapons, powered locomotion, lit the world, and then connected it. It seems as though fire itself is the essence of spiritual awakening. Here it is yet again, lifting a basket high above a two-dimensional plane of existence.
Looking at the world below, one is awestruck by the vastness of open space and the consolidation of the material. Standing in the heart of a city, the world seems entirely false, constructed, and guided. It is an absolutely unnatural feeling to exist in such a place. So unnatural that one must deny themselves to the deeper meanings of life in order to survive there. To wake to the truth behind the facade destroys the material plane, leaving a vestal soul scared and confused. Without a handhold to the real, survival is impossible. The modern world disincentives the real by consuming it at every step. Brief moments of transcendence is all people are allowed to attain. To fully embrace that feeling is to destroy oneself to the world they know. Instead, they must go about their meaningless lives, absorbed by routine and consumed by triviality.
As the balloon drifts further into the countryside, a freeing feeling strikes like a flash of lightning against a lone tree. Spiritual activation. Meaning ignited. It lies in the emptiness of the land: the open, the free, the real. Open in that there are no bounds that hold the spirit back. Free from the routine and banal nature of the modern world. Real in its wildness and danger. This feeling is fleeting. As the balloon lands, a bus is waiting to bring the connected soul back into the disconnected world. The bus ride is a cleanse of the real. Slowly the wild landscape fades to the material and the real blows away like an apparition in the wind. Once back, there is a yearning to return. It was in those moments, that brief flash of time, that the fire took hold. It charges one like a battery so that when they return to the material world, they can bear it for a little longer. Over time the spirit flounders, yearning to attain the spiritual heights of those transient moments. Deep down the truth lies, but deep down it remains.
Next: Journey to Sydney
