SUN BEAMS:...Short Stories Collection...Paragraphs On "The Four Seasons"...

By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

McALLEN, Texas |...We're into the nicer more-forgiving cooler months of the year now, sweet November actually almost, almost done.

Mornings, we sit quietly and sip our coffee, putter around the house chasing plot twists and dialogue for the working story, pit stop at the fridge for a bottle of water, a Coca-Cola or a ripened pear, something to keep the mind working.

There are no rituals, but this next stuff is as close as we get to one:

I was driving home from the coffee shop the other day and I couldn't get this old song out of my head. I needed to clear things up there, but it clung tough. Where had I heard it. I could not remember.

These few lines, especially: "We had joy, we had fun, we had seasons in the sun. But the wine and the song like the seasons have all gone..."

Sounds like a long goodbye to something. To me, anyway.

A forgotten guy named Terry Jacks sang it back in - what? - the Oldies Seventies? Anyway, there it was, on me as I cut through busy intersections on my way home...there like a piece of globby, drying-out carnival cotton candy hanging tough to the tips of my fingers.

I hummed it and then I sang it, but it wasn't until noon that I finally lost it.

I like the song, although it's not a real favorite.

But I'm sure there are songs you know and can easily grab when the best of moods hit you, or when an insistent song takes a hike down the uncharted canyons of your brain just because it can...

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