This unique and startling piece of creative writing art — a new form of artistic expression being pioneered by this author — is part of a yin-yang pair that exploits this Daoist dualistic concept to underscore the opposing dimensions of a “crisis,” both as a moment of great opportunity and a moment of perilous danger, as particularly underscored in the Chinese translation of the word: 危机. 

The piece is also unique in that it comes across as a drawing that attempts to represent a face, but it is actually made entirely of beautified codified symbols, suggesting a highly compressed form of poetry. The breakdown of the word “crisis” as “cr-is-is,” backhandedly extracts that same ambiguity in the English expression of "crisis" with a recollection of the infamous "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is." The effort to represent all of this as part of a head emphasizes the idea that "it is all in the head," with the pupil of one eye shaped as a calligraphic 危 wēi - that even though located in a bright environment of the eye, is in a dark color and relates to the darkness beyond its immediate surrounding light; it connects to its adjacent ear as the calligraphic 险xiǎn and thus represents the side that sees danger in a crisis. The pupil of the other eye, however, representing in bright color the calligraphically drawn 机, eschews the immediate darkness surrounding it in the eye to see the brightness on the horizon, connecting to the ear shaped as a calligraphic 会.

The overall effect, stark in black and white, is to challenge the senses, stimulate a more critical mind that is conducive to highly nuanced and creative expression.

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