There is a lot of old lore about the mystery and danger of the open ocean, a lot of which is mocked in contemporary media, where you see circulating tropes of the grizzled fisherman intensely prowling old creaky taverns on dark, stormy nights, portrayed as a crank of course, telling his harrowing tales of the open ocean to anyone who will stop and listen, but who is otherwise related to at a certain distance and remove: a relic of a bygone era.
Part of that mockery comes from the demystification that is afforded by modern navigational, topographic, and communication technologies and then of the general tendency of capital to seek out and achieve the annihilation of time and space. However these vast spaces - with their equally vast and strange weather phenomena which move through them - will never be completely tamed, as the serious dangers of the fishing trades illustrate.
The concept of the open ocean's domesticated cousin, the open road, can further help illustrate this I think.
The open road - being a product of the built environment - is a very different beast, but it has some interesting dynamics of its own that are worth teasing out, which in my opinion become emblematic of the various dynamics underlying the modern world in general.
Contrary to the open ocean, the open road is intensely and intentionally planned and managed, and with the right equipments and provisions, can be traveled at the height of comfort and convenience. In a climate-controlled car with media and company, one can pass through spectacular landscapes and watch it all slip by in silence beyond the windows, occasionally catching a troubling glimpse of another broken down vehicle or even a stranded person. One may have the fleeting thought that one's fate could be similar, but that the unfortunate traveler will surely find help of their own and be on their way, as you continue to be on yours.
Due to the function of the road as bridging vast distance at great speed, there lurks underneath its smooth and elegant appearance a terrible menace and desolation. The road's slick and stylized mask especially comes down if your vessel is compromised in any way, and your relational motion to the environment and the surrounding traffic becomes inverted. That is, you stop passing the world by and re-enter the world as it exists at that particular place, in all its squalor bisected and crushed by the road, with roadkill and emaciated vegetation nearby, and road debris littered about.
At the same time, the traffic around you continues to move at great speed and you are the one standing still as an obstacle, and you begin to perceive the moving traffic as land, plant, and animal perceive the traffic: as huge, terrifying chunks of metal, glass, and plastic moving at incredibly high speed. And this too is the modern world: to exist at slight remove from it, while still benefitting from its trappings, is a great privilege. But if you must move within the heart of it, you better damn well keep moving with the rest of it.
