The highway is a rorschach test. Look at it, and what do you see? In 1967, Canadian artist Jack Chambers looked at southern Ontario's 401 highway and saw it as a vessel of time.  While driving on the highway, Chambers’ interest was piqued by the scene in his rearview mirror. Behind him lay the glorious modern highway, carved gently into the sloping terrain.  In the painting 401 Towards London (1968-69), the grass is pool table green; the leaves are turning; the slow movement of geological change visible on the tilting horizon. The drivers themselves are stuck in a cycle of comings and goings. Here was the moment “where reality is so imminent that one feels he has stepped off the conveyor belt of time.”1 In a moment where everything in our daily lives feels commodified, the one thing that remains transcendental is our relationship to time. When everything can be bought and sold, ironically, the meditative motion or creeping slowness of car travel offers  rare moments of reflection. Time spent stuck in gridlock disrupts our hyper-commodified, hyper-accelerated world. Traffic can jam us into the present, and make us aware of the granular passage of time. Yet, the illusion of the highway is the illusion of convenience.