Zemblanity, Moscato & William Boyd
Coincidences happen more often than not, is something I have known since I was in my early 20s. I don’t know where I first read it. People might know of the word serendipity but few would know the antonym coined by Scottish writer William Boyd in his novel Armadillo – Zemblanity.
Sometime around the end of 2018 when I went to Leo’s on
Granville Street, counter clerk and friend Jeff Gin showed me something called
a Lensbaby. He said it was defective and he would sell it to me for a song. The
next year, 2019, in February Rosemary and I travelled to Venice and Florence.
While walking on St. Mark’s Square I dropped the Lensbaby. It was crooked but I
kept using it with my Fuji X-E3 digital camera.
Two days ago I became curious about those Venice Lensbaby photographs as Jeff Gin gifted me a complete set of new Lensbaby and attachments.
I looked for Venice in my Fuji digital files in my computer. Alas! There were none. I kept at it and found Italy – Florence 01, etc and Italy-Venice. And there was Italy-Venice-Lensbaby!
I “fixed” a few and printed them. In my opinion they are fantastic.
The bittersweet element here is that Rosemary never got to see them. No coincidences for her. It’s pure zemblanity.
