YESTERDAY A WOMAN AND HER GROWN-UP SON on a path by the San Diego River encountered each other on such an emotionally destructive level that I couldn't stop myself from focusing my attention and my lens in their direction. She was coming from one direction, and he was walking from the other. I was standing at the Mission Center trolley stop above the river path. I know they were mother and son because he in his despair and she in her rage wore mother-son faces. I snapped two pictures and caught more with my camera than I actually saw. It was what I heard that stunned me.

The mother screamed, "You fucking idiot, John. Where the f--k have you been, you stupid, f---ing bastard?" She yelled in his face, "We f---ing told him we'd be there at f---ing ten, and now he f---ing won't have waited for us. You know you're f---ing useless." And she hit him. She hit him hard. She seemed to have been aiming for his face; but he was taller, so her blows stuck him hard across the shoulder and chest. He simply moved his face away and didn't raise his arm or hand to stop her. He backed away from her and sat in obvious despair on a cement table. She sat on the bench looking away from him and continued to rant. Then she stormed away.

When I downloaded the images from my camera, I saw the emotion in his hands and in his face; and I remembered the old cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words. It is his despair more than her anger that the camera caught... and the seeming response of the trees and shrubs around them. It was as if all of nature was screaming.