Published in Overland Issue 201 Summer 2010 · Writing / Main Posts Machine Code David Musgrave My eyes are like machine code, running lines up from the lanes and screens or avenues of trees my limbs walk down, open mouths or sideways squints which open up my mouth or make me squint. It’s one thing to think about it, another thing to live it through, when resemblances cannot be told apart from repetition. Bubbles wobble and rise from a morning dive in the pool where after several laps I tire and lose count. If comparisons were true instead of pathways, fishing lines, I’d happily shut down but it’s not the truth that wakes me up at 3 am, just its piercing semblance. David Musgrave David Musgrave is a poet, critic, novelist and publisher at Puncher & Wattmann. His latest books are Phantom Limb (John Leonard Press) and Glissando: A Melodrama (Sleepers Publishing). More by David Musgrave › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 28 March 20249 April 2024 · Main Posts Why we should value not only lived experience, but also lived expertise Sukhmani Khorana In the wake of this year’s International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, I want to extend the central idea of El Gibbs’s 2022 essay on 'lived expertise' and argue that in media accounts of racism, analytical expertise and lived experience ought to be valued together and even in the same body. 5 March 2024 · Main Posts Andrew Charlton’s school assignment Alex McKinnon Australia's Pivot to India exists for three reasons: so that when Andrew Charlton is interviewed on the radio or introduced on Q+A, his bio includes the phrase "he has written a book about Indian-Australian relations"; to fend off accusations that he is another Kristina Keneally engaging in electoral colonialism in western Sydney; and to help the Albanese government strengthen economic and military ties with Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.