Introduction: The Treasure Chest

Sándor Déki Lakatos–Gypsy Song

A writer’s memory is a treasure chest. In my magic box, I have saved and cherished my dreams and hopes, my fears suppressed, the people I have met and loved, even hated, and stored them for the day I would wish them out. Puff – like Aladdin with his magic lamp. In my treasure chest, weathered by life, I have taken out bits and pieces one by one to color my story with my heart. Sometimes memory plays a game with me, or I play a game with memory, and what was once a tangible thread of my life becomes a mere abstraction. It’s a metamorphosis, no different than what a surreal painter does with the rendering of reality. As a writer I have used time and memory as a brush for truth.

Unconsciously, as I was writing Gift of Diamonds, I reached into my memory’s treasure chest and found scenes from afar that came to me without pattern or reason. I grabbed them, not to lose them, and without realizing how, each item became a scene and turned into a life of its very own. Strangely, the scenes and people took different form until they hardly resembled the original at all. But it was too late. They had already taken shape in my mind and on paper. They were now alive and I marveled at it all, wondering if the imagined is more real than the real.

I will let you decide this as we journey together through time. It will be fun for both of us as I share with you how I fused memory and truth with fiction to write Gift of Diamonds.

The following scenes happened to me or concerned my life and thoughts. By twisting them, I have reshaped them for Mica’s world. They are now yours.