Fictional:

Parramatta Road. The buses release their gas like ocean whales breaching for breath. And the trucks. We're supposed to be leaving for the countryside, but it takes so long to get out of this city that I doubt we'll reach the smogline before nightfall.

There's a jam, but my mother - she's driving - seems patient.

"What a drag," she says, and glances into the rear vision mirror, raising her eyebrows at herself. "Of course, from the nihilistic long perspective of astronomical or teotectonic time, it's not such a long time to wait." She flicks the mirror back into position, "But then again, from that sort of long perspective, all this is pretty pointless really."

"Shut up mum," I sigh.

The lights change, but the traffic, banked and glutted up upon itself, fails to move. Now I glance into the rear vision mirror, but not at myself. I'm looking backwards. And there, reflected back behind us unto infinity, is the hydraheaded highway, twitching and purring and flicking and flashing its siren song of rapid tedium.

There's a bus shelter just down the road from our house. It has a bench, a roof, and a large glass pane at the back, to keep out the wind and rain. Every week or so, someone smashes the glass out of it, and leaves the shelter standing there, useless, an empty frame. Every week or so, they replace the glass, and in due course it gets smashed again.

I catch the bus home from university a few times a week. Every week or so, the driver pulls in with such haste that there's a hideous crunching as the side mirror is slammed into the frame of the bus shelter and is wrenched free, smashing on the pavement. Every time, the bus driver just drives on, without the mirror. Without looking back.