I can’t say enough about the beautiful people at the Daves Avenue Elementary School in Los Gatos, Calif., who hosted an inspiring visit this week. It was Author’s Day at the elementary school, and I was privileged to chat with the sparkling second and third graders — Droonlings, many of them — while Sid Fleischman engaged the upper graders and Matthew Gollub the littler ones.

After a sunny, dry, seventy-degree day of presentations and signing and communal lunch (with lots of students selected as some of the school’s best writers — who blithely thought they were the lucky ones!), the three writers adjourned to Lisa Mammel’s quaint old-town house where at the longest dining table this side of San Simeon we supped with Lisa, her husband (and chef) Chris, their charming children Enza and Cole, Susan von Felten, the school’s principal, Amy Goldsmith, librarian, Billy Martin, 5th grade teacher, and another couple of folks who I’m ashamed to say I can’t recall the names of, though I can remember their twinkling talk.

There was some serious discussion around literacy and words, creative arts, education, and the paths people take, willingly and un, to get where they are. I had the odd sensation of being reminded of something I’ve never quite experienced before, a smart, bohemian-ish gathering of folks of all ages engaged at a long lively table in good talk. Must do this more. . . .

It was a CT to CA round trip of some 36 hours and far too short a stay.

Los Gatos (“the cats”) is fifteen minutes southwest of the San Jose airport, and squarely in Silicon Valley. If I had known — as I later discovered — that John Steinbeck and his wife lived there on Greenwood Avenue where he wrote a fair part of The Grapes of Wrath I might have been persuaded to stay longer; say, move in. One of the places I might have moved into was the Mammels’ gem of a house. Barring that, I would have taken any one of the bungalows on the northeast side of Broadway, adjacent to the Toll House Hotel where the authors were put up and where, yes, there was a cookie on the pillow at bedtime. Breakfasted in Le Boulanger on the corner of the nearby plaza. Heavenly. Coffee. Banana Nut muffin. Didn’t have my notebook, but the hotel’s telephone notepad which worked just as well. Read the complimentary WSJ from which this, from an article about Murray Perahia’s new edition of Beethoven’s 32 sonatas for the German publisher Henle:

“It’s not just a scholastic activity. I studied the sketches. It’s a great privilege to study the way Beethoven thought, and the sketches give you an insight. He thought in very long stretches. All four movements of the ‘Funeral March’ Sonata, for example, were an inspiration that came at one moment. But I think in all the sonatas he saw the whole picture. It’s the same with Mozart, music came in a flash — though it took longer in Beethoven’s case, and it was harder to get that flash worked out.”

A fascinating look at musical creation, and I’m once again startled by the similarities with literary creation. They both, after all, happen by scratching a wet tool on paper.

And now back east to dream of long warm green summer days and to get that flash worked out.

If I return, the first place
is a room, my first sense of it feverish,
the air thickening in it

and difficult to breathe.
A shadow like a smudge
in one corner of the ceiling prints

a dark brown hole in the white
over a posterbed
half slept in by my brother.

God knows what my dream was that sick night
when I thumped around and around
till the crib had wheeled across

the floor and pinned the door slam shut,
but when morning came
they pushed the room awake

and found me soaking
in a drift of covers,
the beat-up sunken rag of a toy

like a trophy in my hands,
his poor head
dangling empty from the legs

and a hundred
little bits of foam dribbling
down to the headboard

where I’d pulled all of his guts
out in my sleep.
My mother stood there, hushed

in the half light.
My grandfather was pragmatic:
“he’ll do it again,”

and shook his head.
My part in that collusion was saying
nothing, for I knew I had been right

to unstuff him,
and knew somehow that he assented, as if
it was a kind of purgation

like sweating out a fever
I had to do to keep him safe.
I knew we’d both come out alive.

But the dream began to loosen, and fell quickly
when she picked me up
trailing swaddles of bedclothes back to the bed.

Why all the fuss? I’d had a fever. It was simple.
But it was out of my hands.
I remember my grandfather

waiting in the hall
as I was lifted, dried and dressed.
It came out slowly,

days after the event,
that he’d taken that toy down to the basement
and shot it right into the furnace.

Later I went down to find some trace
left in the chamber.
I brought up a stool to the iron

face, pulled on the coiled grip
and looked in as the vent swung back
at cool stacked wood just lying there

dusty in the stairlight
from the kitchen. Another time,
though I was not alone, I stood

and peered at sparks
and ashes spitting off
the so-red center of the fire.

Don’t much care for this sort of Report, and now two weeks in a row, but have a sense of responsibility despite myself.

Have always liked the math problem, “what is the next value in this series?”

So, a list of books that have settled on the desk lately.

A Tragic Honesty (Bailey), The Promised Land (Lemann), The Journals of John Cheever, Train Whistle Guitar (Murray), How Fiction Works (Wood) What This Cruel War Was Over (Manning), Flannery (Gooch), Sweet Land of Liberty (Sugrue).

Then there was the lovely peaceful visit to Villa Maria Education Center in Stamford yesterday. Ah, love in action. Sister Carol Ann and her staff are angels of humor and hope.

Love Poems (Sexton).

What didn’t happen: turning one’s books face up to crowds, saying, “buy this one, then this one, then this one.”

Ah, here we go. Am now a podcast. iTunes, even. Or, you can be exploratory and look at Writerscast.com. That was fun. David Wilk is a lovely man, well-read, courteous, and professional. Thank you, David.

Well that Hemingway line. “All you have to do is write one true sentence.” Get it down to one true sentence and add another and another. But not too quickly.

Being more or less done with the workspace essays, The Friday Book Report is issuing a hearty thank you to everyone who participated. The allure of three dimensions is sometimes quite strong, and the responses so varied and inspiring.

So we use this time to gather the events of this week, untangle them, and stack them neatly before moving on.

On Monday, after a weekend of work — what else is new? — the revision of The Lost Empire of Koomba was delivered to its editor. Check.

On Tuesday, the requested “summary,” less detailed than an outline, but not an insubstantial rendering of the storyline of, not the next book but the one following that, was written up from vague notes into a fetching two-page document, and delivered to same editor. Check.

Wednesday? Ah, early morning at favorite breatkfast joint with two favorite writers. Actually, a moment. Before they arrived, had to mention to the coffeepot-bearing waitress that the lack of a soundtrack — that constant musical noise that infects every other restaurant, coffee-shop, saloon, and lunch counter in the world — was a thing from heaven. The burble of quiet voices (or none at all when one gets there before one’s companions), is the only sound in this place, and fades so easily behind the voice of a fine book. Heavenly indeed. Breakfast was, as usual, a couple of hours of fine booky talk from real-life practitioners with assorted multiple novels under assorted belts. This fairly recent development — sharing — is the high point of the month. Must keep pressing for more frequency here. Weekly? Wouldn’t mind at all. Then back home for call from agent. Hush on that. Then? Hmm. Some exploratory work on . . . other story.

Thursday, got down to full chapter outline of Knights of the Ruby Wand, the one before the one after the one after Koomba. Check. Full draft of this story due mid-April. Will start in earnest Monday.

Friday, today, more work on “other story” referred to above. Looking forward to Celebration panel tomorrow. Bright Lights. Big City.